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SKETCHES OE GASPE 



BY 
JOHN M. CLARKE 



ALBANY 

J. B. LVON COMPANV, STATE PRINTERS 

1908 






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1 



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CONTENTS 



PACR 

Introduction ," ■ ;;; " / ^"'- il' ^ 

The Scenery of the Mountains, I : The Ocean's Work ; at Perce ; on the 
Forillon — Destruction of the Forillon — The Forillon sinkmg — Ihe 
American Bank — Scenery of the Forillon — Mt St Alban — The 
King's Road — Origin of the word Forillon — Hognedo or Honguedo 

— View from the Forillon — Shiphcad — Origin of the word Gaspe — 
The End of the Appalachian System — Date of the Forillon — Little 

The Scpnery of the Mountains 11: The Cliffs of Perce— Perce Rock — 
Changes in Perce Rock — Descriptions by Champlain ; LeTac ; Denys ; 
LeClercq — Captain Smith's Engraving — Ferland — LeBoutilher — 
The Future of the Rock — Fossils of the Rock; their abundance — 
The Murailles — Mt Joli and Cape Canon — Relations of the limestone 
Cliffs , 15 

The Scenery of the Mountains, III: The Sandstones — Gaspe Basm — 
Its Scenery — The "Admiral " — Gaspe Bay — Rocks in Art 25 

The Scenery of the Mountains, IV: The Mountains of the St Lawrence 

— Cape Rosier to Grande Vallee — The Shickshocks 28 

The Great Reck Folds and Troughs: Fold i. The Forillon — Fold 2, 

Gaspe Mountain — Fold 3. Tar Point — Fold 4- Point St Peter — 
Fold 5. Perce — The Bays and Rivers — Barachois, Bar and Tickle.. 29 

Perce Mountain: Table-a-rolante — Mt Ste Anne — its red con- 
glomerates—Their extent to Bonaventure Island — Destruction by the 
sea — The Vision on Mt Ste Anne — The coast at Perce changing 33 

The Rocks and the People: Geology and Settlement — The Mines — 
Their history — Petroleum, its promises and disappointments — The 
submarine mountains and the fishing • • • • 39 

The Earlv Settlements: The French Fishermen — Jehan Denys — Car- 
tier ; stops at Perce ; lands in Gaspe Bay — Champlain — The RecoUets 

— Sir William Alexander — Kirk and De Rouquemont — The Jesuits 

— Nicholas Denvs — Return of the Recollets — Father LeClercq — St 
Peter's church at Perce — St Claire's at Bonaventure Island — Fathers 
Didace, Joseph Denvs and Jumeau at Perce — Burning of the churches 
bv the Bostonians — Father Jumeau's letter — Hovenden Walker and 
Jack Hill at Gaspe — Beauharnois — American loyalists 43 

Historical Sketch of the Cod-lishery: Procedure in the time of Nicholas 
Denvs — Same methods followed todav — Present mode of packing 
for shipment — The arrival of Charles Robin — Early procedure of the 
Robin establishment — Robin's letters — Capture of the " Bee " and 
" Hope " — Business abandoned on account of American Revolution — 
Criticisms of the Robin administration — Incoming of the Loyalist 
settlers — Later fishing establishments 55 

The Place Names • • ^ 

Bonaventure Island: Earlv Settlement — The old houses — Gannet 
Cliffs ■ 68 

Gaspe Stories and Legends: Ogress of Bonaventure Island — Virtues of 
Alca — Little Prisoner of Perce — LeClerco's Expedition to the Indi- 
ans of the Cross — Mirage of Cape d'Espoir — Marguerite — Creation 
and Deluge Mvth — Myth of Recreation — The Gaspe Flea 7^ 



INTRODUCTION 



It is my hope that the kindly people of the Gasi)e Coast, to whom 
these sketches come and who will be first to detect their short- 
comings, may not be indisposed at this attempt to picture some 
aspects of their country. Where settlements are so venerable it 
may seem a somewhat intrusive enthusiasm that regards this ancient 
coast a theme for special discourse, but I have approached Gaspe 
less with a tourist's eye than with a mind absorbed by some of its 
scientific problems. The eft'ort to solve the latter has awakened 
a lively appreciation of its other attractions and a geologist's interest 
in the rocks and fossils of the country has served to sharpen my 
apperceptions of the rest. To other readers I may say that there 
may be some excuse for these untechnical sketches in the fact that 
very little has been written in English of this inviting country, save- 
in the way of statistical reports or unpoetical inducements to coloni- 
zation. 

In the presence of the ancient settlements of Gaspe, the sciojv 
of modern towns must feel a proper deference, the decent 
outcome of respect for a long, if uneventful, past. Life has gone 
slowly on this coast, not with the leaps and bounds of newer in- 
vasions, but nevertheless in obeisance to an all pervading law of 
nature. Upon the earth of today and of the long yesterday are 
everywhere types of animal and plant life wdiicli have rested com- 
placently without change through the ages while their associates 
have strode on leaving their early companions far aside in the 
forward or backward evolution of the race. In a world so solely- 
given over to competition, so abandoned to the purpose to arrive,, 
the conservative is unusual enough to be fascinating ; it is the anchor 
which enables the ship to ride out the onrush of the waves; the 
steamer's sail which serves to steady its progress ; it is the rotund 
and comfortable mother fortifying and ensuring all that is best in- 
the race. 

If amongst niy readers there are any unfamiliar with this coast 
let me give a proper location for these observations. 

Gaspe is that vast peninsula of Eastern Quebec which lies be- 
tween the broad mouth of the St Lawrence river and the Bay of 




PERCt: ROCK 



6 Introduction 

Chalenr, facing the waters of the Gulf of St Lawrence. It is 
the Gaspe Peninsula, more trippingly termed in the French, Gas- 
pesie and in the English, Gaspesia, charmingly corrupted by the 
habitant to Gaspesy. Properly, Gaspe is Gaspe County, which, 
with Bonaventure County at the south, divides most of the great 
peninsula. It is Gaspe County which here concerns us most, which 
carries the most striking contrasts of coast and mountain, where 
the wilderness still prevails except along a narrow belt of shore, 
which is farthest from the world's thoroughfares and where the 
geologic features are most inviting. 

Gaspe County in size might be a king's realm. It is larger than 
"the State of Massachusetts or the Kingdom of Saxony, but it may 
never carry a greatly larger population than is now represented in 
the scattered villages along its coasts. It is no regret to the lover 
of its genuine attractions that official invitations to colonization 
have borne but little fruit, or that the tourist has hardly yet begun 
liis inroads. 

Geographically, it is a great headland projecting into the Gulf, 
deeply indented for a length of sixteen miles by Gaspe Bay, which 
divides it unfairly, leaving only the slender peninsula of Little 
Gaspe, or the Forillon, between it and the St Lawrence river and 
broadly incut by the Malba}% whence southward to the Bay of 
Chaleur the coast is undivided. 

Gaspe County, though today menaced by a railroad, has for its 
chief land thoroughfare the highway winding along the shore be- 
tween the mountains and the water, or over and along the mountain 
■slopes. From these are short branches leading to back concessions- 
■or up the larger rivers, but even the coast road is not very old and 
men hardly past their prime have told me of their part in the build- 
ing of it. 

I do not know how many, thousand people are living and trying 
to live in the great county, but not many. Census reports are 
always accessible, but they make no record pf the fact that though 
all told there are barely enough to make a small city yet these are 
imfailingly kind, courteous and hospitable. The population seems 
to increase, in spite of all governmental inducements, only by the 
time-honored method. Large families prevail and flourish on the 
scanty livings which sea and soil afiford to the oftenjnuch bested 
struggler for existence. The fish, the lumber and the chilly farms 
are the sources from which happiness and contentment are here 
derived. 



SKETCHES OF GASPE 



The Scenery of the Mountains 

I 

The Ocean's Work; at Perce; on the Forillon — Destruction 
of the Forillon — The Forillon Sinking — The American Bank 

— Scenery of the Forillon — Mt St Alban — The King's Road 

— Origin of the zvord Forillon — Hognedo or Hoiiguedo — 
View from the Forillon — Shiphead — Origin of the word 
Gaspe — The End of the Appalachian System — Date of the 
Forillon — Little Gaspe 

Through whatever eyes it be viewed, the happiest combination 
for the true appreciation of scenery is a mixture of the geologist 
and the artist. There must be something of each in every real 
devotee of nature. To the artist's eye, delicacy of coloring, refine- 
ments of light and shade, exactitude of perspective and boldness of 
contrast, all quickly apprehended, arouse an intellectual enthusiasm 
so long as the picture lasts. I am temerariously disposed to put 
the geologist's appreciation of scenery on a different and higher 
plane. His eye is not blinded, though it may be less keen to the 
passing contrasts in the unceasing play of refraction and reflection, 
but these transitory embellishments of the scene dawn upon him 
gradually, because, seeing first the topographic forms and seeking 
their causes, his appreciation begins only when these causes have 
fully revealed themselves. This will not be at the first glance at 
an unfamiliar landscape, but more often than not comes only after 
long and laborious research. 

At Perce, the most dramatic spot on the Gaspe Coast, where 
brush and pen both falter, where jagged cliffs, insulated rock, 
sombre headlands and grassy slopes encircle the consecrated moun- 
tain of Ste Anne, and almost every shade of the spectrum bends 
its rays to the eye, an artist' strolled in five and twenty years ago, 
schooled and practised. During all these years, the ever changing 
colors over the changeless forms so imbued his being that no other 



8 Sketches of Gaspe 

can hope to appreciate as he the panorama there displayed, or to 
sound the depths of his spiritual delight in it.* But to the geologist 
the brilliant cliffs do not assault the sky in vain. The great Pierced 
Rock is not merely a glorious mass of soft reds and yellows and 
greens, nor Ste Anne, only an uplifted blood-red altar mantled with 
deathless verdure of spruce and fir. They are all these and more, 
for apart from their esthetic beauties and beneath their brilliant ex- 
teriors are the secrets of their origin and the keys which unlock 
many a serious problem in the making of the earth. 

The scenery of Gaspe rather than its history first invites us as 
it is the more insinuating, the more venerable and to the traveler 
the more immediate. Gaspesian scenery lends itself most readily 
to either scientific or sentimental treatment. I may be detected 
in indulging in the latter, but I trust not at the expense of fidelity 
to the former. 

The scenery of Gaspe County has a natural geological basis of 
diversity. The eye recognizes the profound differences at once, 
even though unconscious of their causes. The whole country is 
underlain by a series of great troughs and folds of the rocks run- 
ning almost parallel to each other and to the shores of Gaspe Bay, 
and these project at the shore line in the majestic and ragged cliffs 
which form the striking and brilliant features of the coast, White- 
head, the torn cliffs of Perce, the threatening reefs of St Peter, 
the bold walls of Shiphead, Bon Ami and St Alban. Beneath 
these folds, and forming the foundation on which they rest, are 
the vertical and distorted strata of much more ancient date, that 
make the low cliffs of Cape Rosier and extend thence eastward 
in majestic walls all along the shore of the lower St Lawrence. 
Lying almost flat on top of the crests of all the folds south of 
Gaspe Bay, and near the coast, is an enormous mantle of brilliant 
red conglomerate and sandstone, rising from the base to the highest 
summits of Perce Mountain. 

Speaking then with precision, these heights of Gaspe divide them- 
selves into the true mountains, wherein the rock strata have been 
folded, and the great dissected plateau of Perce Mountain, where 
there has been no crumpling of the strata. Singularly enough, this 
plateau is highest of all these heights as they now stand, save for 

* This is a reference to Mr. Frederick James whose greath- lamented death 
has occurred since this page was written. With attributes of artistic genius 
were combined in Mr. James attractive personality based on broad culture 
and large sympathy. 



The Scoicry of the Mountains g 

the greater mountains of the Shickshocks in the remoter inland 
south of the St Lawrence. 

The outhne of the Gaspe Coast expresses only the present phase 
of its history. The eternal ocean, unceasingly pounding at its 
€dges, has gnawed it into its present form. This great mill of the 
^ods has slowly ground back to its primal mud an enormous body 
of rock which, not so long ago as time is reckoned in geology, was 
a part of the land. One will go far indeed to find such magnifi- 
cent demonstrations of the devouring power of the sea. At Perce 
it has cut away Bonaventure Island from along the flanks of Mt 
Ste Anne and the shores of the South Bay, by a channel three miles 
wide, from which remnants of the old rock still project above the 
water ; it has cut away the Pierced Rock from the headlands of Mt 
Joli and Cape Canon, with which it once formed a now lost moun- 
tain ; it has eaten away another and greater mountain above the 
North Beach, leaving to the present only the ragged ]\Iurailles, 
which formed its southern flanks. 

To observe the ocean's work about the peninsula of Little Gaspe, 
or the Forillon, let the eye follow on our hydrographic chart the 
line of thirty fathoms. The little spine of land that runs from 
Grande Greve to Cape Gaspe rises seven hundred feet along the 
sea clift's and falls sheer to the St Lawrence on the northern side. 
Yet on the north at the foot of this inaccessible escarpment the 
sea-bottom falls away very gradually, and it is full five miles from 
the present coast-line before it reaches a depth of one hundred and 
eighty feet. All this volume of rock, represented by the width of 
five miles bounding the coast and a height far greater than a thou- 
sand feet, has the ocean gnawed away from Cape Gaspe in compara- 
tively recent time. 

Now if the eye follow this thirty fathom line along the shore of 
Gaspe Bay .from Grande Greve and Indian Cove to the Cape it will 
be seen that off this coast the fall is abjectly downward from six 
and sixteen fathoms to thirty-eight, forty and fifty-two fathoms. 
Here the phenomena are the counterpart of those on the other 
shore. All the rock strata are regularly and deeply inclined toward 
the waters of the Bay, and the waves strike only along the smooth, 
dipping surfaces of the layers. On this side it is not the gnawing 
of the ocean that shows itself by the abrupt submarine descent, but 
a continuation of the dipping rocks carried on downward for full 
three hundred feet. The ocean is eating away on both sides of the 
little peninsula, but on the north at a tremendous advantage, pound- 



lo Sketches of Gaspe 

ing away, under the fierce impact of the northeast storms, against 
the edges of the rocks, while the south side is attacked only by the 
quieter waters of the Bay against its smooth sloping faces. There 
is little doubt this land is sinking with comparative rapidity. Oc- 
casionally along the flanks of this peninsula can be seen a trace of 
ancient sea beaches and from Indian Cove to the Cape is a- fine 
wave cut rock terrace high over the present water level and these 
indicate a former upward movement of the land. Mr A. W. Dol- 
bel, agent of the extensive and venerable fishing establishments of 
the William Fruing Company, who has been stationed on the Gaspe 
coast for nearly fifty years, tells me that twice in his experience it 
has been necessary to move further up the beach at the Grande 
Greve, the seaward panel of the drying racks for the herring nets, 
because of the encroachments of the sea. The beaches at Le Hu- 
quet's, St George's and Indian Coves, all along the south shore, 
are known to be narrower than in the earlier days of the settlement; 
so that today the southern margin of the Forillon is sinking. 

Let us look again at the map and follow the lines of forty and 
fifty fathoms. Fifty fathoms is less than half the height of the 
rocks rising straight above the water at Shiphead, and yet should the 
water fall away these three hundred feet the land would run out into 
the Gulf, following the direction of the mountain range, until it in- 
cluded all the rocky shoals called the " American Bank," once a 
part of the same range of mountains. Even an elevation of the sea 
bottom for one hundred feet would turn the American bank into a 
rocky island of no small dimensions. Such it once was. Now wasted 
by the waters, the home of the cod, it leaves only to the imagination 
the scenes of life played out on the grassy slopes during the ages 
before its destiny was accomplished. Like the Lyonesse, it may 
have had its Armorel in the unrecorded and unsubmerged days of 
its past. 

So the -little peninsula of the Forillon, survivor of a grander 
past, now barely a half mile across at the portage above the Grande 
Greve, is not only going down, but being devoured as it goes. But 
it is too soon to sing its requiem. Majestic stands its rib of moun- 
tains, the still mighty flank of a once mightier range. On its south- 
ward slopes are planted some of the serenest and most contented 
homes I have known; its farms, often pitched at angles of twenty 
degrees to the water, yield their increase, while the crest of spruce 
and fir adds softness and beauty to every contour. One may 
here start at the waters of Gaspe Bay and, climbing upward, a short 




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II 



The Scenery of the Moiiiitaiiis II 

half hour will bring him to the cliffs of Bon Ami, seven hundred 
feet straight over the waters of the St Lawrence. Off at his left, 
above the curve of Rosier Cove, towers bare St Alban, twelve hun- 
dred feet, the highest point reached by these rocks in their upward 
inclination. If he will take the King's Road, which traverses the pe- 
ninsula from Grande Greve to Cape Rosier, it will lead him at first 
gently through a waj- embowered in evergreens and bring him with 
startling abruptness almost to the height of the Bon Ami cliffs. 
Lying on his belly on the grass of the roadside, he may test his 
nerve by watching the waves break at the base of the concave cliff 
hundreds of feet below him. ^Mighty St Alban rises again at his 
left, a gray bare rock wall on its sea front, embrasured in a sloping 
talus of its own fragments and resting on the projecting point of 
rock called " the Quay " at the edge of the water. St Alban seems 
the very genius of the place, a stern, weather-beaten god, skirted irt 
his kirtle of fallen rocks, with foot planted forward on the strand,, 
bidding a vain defiance to the waves. I rather suspect that King 
Knut who is popularly known to have been guilty of some such 
impotent defiance to the onrushing waves, may have to take his 
place as a like imposing sea cliff among the geological myths, to- 
gether with Lot's wife. Niobe, and the Chimaera. 

The King's Road, which reaches the summit of the cliffs, from 
this point becomes quite impossible, pitching down at an indescrib- 
able angle, but it comes out at last, beyond the line of vision, to the 
broad flat triangle of Cape Rosier and to a wholly different series 
of rocks which produce quite distinct scenic effects. 

Some of the earliest of the French explorers, perhaps Champlain, 
termed this narrow peninsula, this spine of land which we have 
been describing, the Forillon*. In some early maps and in the 
Jesuit Relations, the name, often spelled Fourillon, is attached 
only to the cape now called by the English, Shi])head. Out at the 
end of Shiphead until 1851 stood an obelisk of rock which the sea 
had separated from the cliff". To this the name Forillon was vi- 
cariously applied, the name of the whole being taken for the part. 
The obelisk was also and still is to the French, La Vieille, the Old 
Woman, which, says the Abbe Ferland, with its tufted cap of ver- 

* Describing the hills and headland on the south shore of Gaspe bay, 
Nicholas Dcnys in his " Description " ( 1672) says : " Cettc pointe se nomme 
le Forillon. il y a unc petite Isle devant on les pecheurs de Gaspe vicnnent 
faire leur degrad pour trouver la molue " (p. 234). This use of the name 
is quite at variance with that of earlier writers who applied it only to the 
northern peninsula. 



12 Sketches of Gaspe 

dure, resembles some of the Canadian grandmothers. Admiral 
Bayfield put it down on his charts as the Floivcrpot, and so it stands 
today on English maps. It has been suggested that Forillon may be 
■derived from the word forer, to drill or bore ; as one should say, a 
drill, and certainly this long narrow spine upon the charts might well 
suggest such a name. Others would have it that the term had 
reference to the piercing of the end of the cape by the parting of 
the obelisk, and so the word applied to that only. Be this as it 
may, the obelisk is gone. La Vieille has long since fallen, and 
nothing remains but the Flowerpot, and we very much need for 
constant use a term for this Gaspe spine. So I shall call it the 
Forillon, believing that in so doing we return to its original use. 
On Lescarbot's map of 1612 the little peninsula bears the name 
Hognedo, and it would seem that he himself was responsible for 
its application to the place. When Cartier returned to this coast, 
in 1535, on his second voyage, bringing back with him the two 
Indian boys whom he had carried away from Gaspe the year be- 
fore, as his ship hove in sight of the lofty headland the lads greeted 
the home ground with delighted cries of " Honguedo ! Honguedo ! " 
Later writers have construed this word either as the tribal name 
of the people, or their ec[uivalent to liomc. 

From the broad fist of Rosier Cape and Cove, this thin peninsula 
runs out into the sea like an index finger, as it might say to the 
traveler 

ilfl& Mark well her bulii'arks 



From the homes pitched high on the slopes of the Forillon the 
^ye sweeps over a magnificent stretch of bay and sea and distant 
mountains, and never tires at the infinitude of variety in the scene. 
The Forillon itself and the hills of Little Gaspe are so foreshort- 
ened as to be almost lost. The observer seems to view the pano- 
rama spread before him as do the gulls wending their way from 
their roost on the Bon Ami cliffs to their feeding grounds in the 
barachois at Douglastown. The wdiole stretch of Gaspe Bay lies 
before the eye from the hillside galleries. Far away at the west are 
the rounded sandstone mountains of Gaspe Basin, besmudged by 
the smoke clouds from the lumber mills at the great sandbar. Here 
the panorama begins, and under the circling eye pass in due succes- 
sion the low cliffs of Douglastown with its sandbars, its tickle and 
barachois lying low to the waterline, tlie long gray rock face of 



The Scenery of the Mountains 15 

Chien Blanc, the reddish timbered hills of iiois Brule, and the 
crimson sea-wall of sanslstone running on eastward to Point St Peter, 
the end of the south shore save for the little lighthouse-crowned 
Plateau Island at its tip. Above these lower heights of the fore- 
ground rise at the east the graceful curves of majestic Perce Moun- 
tain, twenty-four miles away as the cormorant flies, crowned at the 
summit with the shrine of Ste Anne. The good saint often draws 
her mantle of fog about her, but on a fair day from the Forillon her 
cross is an undisguised test of unweakened vision. Looking from 
the higher slopes of the p-Qrillon, the Perce Rock slips above the 
horizon, and from Shiphead light at the tip of the Cape one sees 
Ijonaventure Island stretched out for its full length. Beyond them 
all the great expanse of gulf waters. 

To the portrayal of the sublime and awe-inspiring in nature, the 
vehement which impinges on the vision and beats its way through 
the portals of the brain, our language, well-handled, lends itself 
wdth adequacy, but to paint in words these gentler aspects and her 
more insinuating moods wdien she addresses herself to the heart 
and permeates the being of the observer with a delicious sensuous- 
ness, here, I think, our common vehicle falters. The views from 
the Forillon are not at all as I have described them, the gentler 
embellishments, their brilliancy of color and freshness of life are 
lacking. Here on the rising slopes of the little farms fighting their 
way upward against the spruce and fir, on an August day are 
carpets of coral-red pigeon berries set in emerald nests, great clus- 
ters of heavy gold-tipped tansy and golden rod fill the fence corners, 
the fallow fields are blue with climbing vetch or gleam wdth rugs of 
crimson Monarda. Banks of white immortelles are at every hand, 
w'hile daisy and tall dandelion add color to the scheme. From such 
a bower the eye looks down the long slope to the water, dotted with 
the flats and barges of the fishermen, and across the water to the 
distant mountains. With every passing cloud the scene is changed. 
Shadows come and go upon the distant summits, deepening their 
azure with an approaching storm, blackening as the storm impends 
and blotting them out as it bursts. The oncoming autumn efifects 
little change in the aspect of the evergreen woodlands, but there are 
still patches of hardwood trees where autumnal tints are painted in 
extravagant brilliancy. 

We were speaking of the pernicious activity of the sea in the 
destruction of the Forillon. Aided by the northwest storms and 
frosts, the waters will continue to waste its mountains, pare down 



14 Sketches of Gaspe 

St Peter, undermine Plateau Island, demolish the walls of Perce, 
dismember the Pierced Rock and efface Bonaventure. The Amer- 
ican Bank is the handwriting on the wall, its fate is the forecast 
for all the coast. 

For the Forillon, however, the end that is to be concerns us less 
than the end that is, and the end of the Forillon is the end of the 
world, the Finistere, for this coast at least. The double row of 
sloping rock ridges which make the Forillon, terminates in a two- 
lobed point. The southern and higher is Shiphead, well named, for 
-US. one stands on the Hghthouse and looks down on the drum-mast 
and the outline of the cliff edge the resemblance to the foredeck and 
prow of a ship is most striking, and from outside the profile is even 
more effective. It is six hundred and ninety feet straight down 
from the grassy edges of the cliff to the water. 

Outside it is the severed rock, which, it is claimed by some of 
the early writers, gave its name to the whole Gaspe Country. I 
find a note in the Jesuit Relations which credits the Abbe Maurault 
as deriving the word Gaspe from the Abenaqui word Katsepiou, 
that which is cut off, and having reference to this detached rock 
mass. If this is the true origin of the name it seems in a grim 
.kind of harmony with the nature of the coast that the very feature 
■which furnished its appellation has in its own turn been devoured by 
the sea. The northern lobe of the headland is Cape Gaspe, once 
called the Old Man by those who would find a companion for La 
Vieille. These ends of parallel declivities are separated by a low 
coulee, a hanging valley whose end lies far above the sea. In this 
coulee formerly the light and fog-bell stood and the ruins of this 
older structure have afforded many an interesting fossil. 

The road thither from the Grande Greve is a series of ups and 
downs, but the last grand ascent brings one to a point of view from 
which no other spot on the coast so profoundly impresses the 
observer with the destructive agency of the sea, as he notes the 
ragged sheer limestone walls stretching away toward Cape Bon Ami 
and Cape Rosier Cove, the barest remnant of what has once been a 
mighty mountain range, reaching toward Anticosti Island. As one 
stands on the summit of this weather-beaten promontory let him 
remember that he is at the very outermost supramarine tip of the 
great Appalachian Mountain system and on the remnant of one of 
its innermost folds which here gave birth to the St Lawrence river. 
Our chart of soundings bears us out in the conclusion that the 
American Bank is the easternmost submarine trace of this great 



The Scenery of the Mountains 15 

mountain system, for beyond that point we can find no clew to its 
extension ; but Shiphead and Cape Gaspe are more positive and 
visible evidence. 

It is well to note from the map the singular curvature of the 
axis of this mountain fold, which carries into full effect the great 
S-form of the entire mountain system along the coast of North 
America. It is well known to geologists that the folding up of the 
Appalachian system did not take place all at once, at any one time 
in the history of the continent, but that it was built up gradually. 
Here in Gaspe some of these mountain ridges date back to the 
close of Silurian time, but the rock beds of the Forillon were 
crumpled up into mountains toward the close of Devonian time and 
further south the later rocks lie almost flat above them ; in Pennsyl- 
vania and southward, in the newer part of the mountain system, 
these later rocks too are upturned and folded into the mountains, 
thus showing that this part of the system is of later date. 

At Little Gaspe there is an accession to the mountain structure, 
and here we get the first glimpse of the great sandstone masses 
which cover all the area of Gaspe County save near the coast line 
of the Gulf. Here one may see, near the corner of the beach as 
the road turns toward the little English church, these sandstones 
lying on the sloping limestones, and from here on up the Bay to 
Peninsula and onward the sandstone masses make the first ridge 
of the series, the two limestone ridges falling into the background. 
Remnants of these sandstones which once overlay all the limestones 
of the l^'orillon arc still to be seen at Indian Cove, fallen down into 
a crevice of the rocks beneath. 

II 

The Cliffs of Perec — Perec Rock — Changes in Perec Rock — 
Descriptions by Champlain; Le Tac; Denys; Le Clercq — 
Captain Smith's Engraving — Ferland — Le Boutillier — The 
Future of the Rock — Fossils of the Rock; their Abundance 
— The Murailles — Mt Joli and Cape Canon — Relations of 
the Limestone Cliffs 

The ribs of the Forillon are stupendous, remarkable in uniform- 
ity of development and amazingly rich in their profusion of the 
life forms that peopled the ancient seas in which they were laid 
down, but the limestones of Perce surpass them in bold and start- 
ling picturcsqueness. If the traveler approaches this wonderful 



i(y Sketches of Gaspe 

spot by boat from the south, in the westering sun, guided by the 
towering red cross-crowned summit of Mt Ste Anne, hugging 
the shore chffs of Cape d'Espoir and Cape Blanc, he sees 
nothing of the spectacle which is in store for him, but as his boat 
beats round the head of Cape Blanc the stupendous Pierced Rock 
bursts upon his amazed view, towering in majesty and clothed in 
garb of many colors, while the torn limestones of the Murailles, 
stretching away to the north, turn to him their verdure clad slopes. 
Let him come upon the Perce harbor from the north and as he 
rounds Point St Peter and steams across the Malbay, the Perce 
Rock fixes his eye and in ever growing majesty subtends a larger 
and still larger angle of his sight. At his right are the higher and 
brilliant cliffs of the Murailles, leading their assault upon the sky 
in ragged lines. If the sun is his friend and lies to the east behind 
him, the vision grows to its climax as his boat swings to under the 
beam of the great Rock. 

Various chances have brought my approach to this spot from 
both directions, in glowing sun and in dripping fog, once with its 
outlines silhouetted against a moonlit sky and once beating behind 
it in a heavy sea at the crack of dawn when a tormented surf drove 
us from the desired haven and sent us scurrying down the coast. 
But perhaps none of these approaches by water is excelled for 
effectiveness by that which greets the traveler on the way leading 
over the high Perce Mountain from the Barachois of Malbay. 
Here as. through truly alpine scenery, one reaches the height of 
grade, the isolated rock strikes the eye head on, like a gigantic liner 
rounding the point of Mt Joli and sailing into the port of the North 
Beach. 

Perce Rock may be prosaically described as an isolated mass of 
limestone in strata that are almost vertical, dipping a little to the 
south, about fifteen hundred feet long and two hundred and eighty- 
eight feet high at its peak or inner point. At its greatest width it 
is about three hundred feet through, its diameter varying greatly 
along the projections and recesses of its sides. At the seaward 
end stands a smaller mass entirely isolated and cut away from the 
parent rock, and the rear of the great rock itself is perforated by 
an arched tunnel about sixty feet high. The summit, which is now 
wholly inaccessible, has a gently undulating surface and shows all 
the features of a small section of a mountain side. The rock i& 
?oparated from the shore and the low headland of gray limestone 
beginning with Mt Joli and continuing to Cape Canon, by about 
one hundred yards of sandbar which is covered at high tide. 



The Scenery of the Mountains i^ 

The singular beauty of this amazing scenic feature is partly due 
to its unusual symmetry but more to its brilliancy of color. Perce 
Rock is no such gray pile as one may find among the striking sea- 
ruins of the northern oceans, on the shores of Caithness at Thurso 
and Scrabster in Scotland, in Hoy and about Stromness in the 
Orkneys, and even the brighter shades in the rock piles of the 
Magdalen Islands farther out in the (lulf do not make a comparison 
adequate. Its walls are bathed in tints of ])urple-red, bright yellow 
and gray-blue, the natural shades of the limestone, and these are 
diversified by great streaks of white calcitc which vein the mass. 
On its top the green carpet of grass spreads downward as the 
slope permits, while over the jagged anfractuosities near the sum- 
mit, a deep orange-red lichen has added its color to the scheme. 
The top of the clift" is the home of countless gulls and cormorants 
ever moving about like a halo of fog scuds and screaming sempi- 
ternally in the same shrill notes that echoed on the sea cliffs of the 
lost mountain in the ages past. 

Seeking for some clew to the rate at which the sea has been 
devouring Perce Rock, I have looked for other evidence than can 
be found in the cliff itself. 

It is not strange that so marked a feature of the coast should 
have made a profound impression on the earliest explorers, and 
here and there are references to it in the writings of some of them 
who had found the Isle Percee a haven for wood and water, and 
occasionally a note in the relations of the Recollct and Jesuit 
fathers. In Champlain's Des Salvages of 1603,* I find this account 
of it, but there is nothing in it that does not fit the conditions of 
today. " The Isle of Percee," he says " is a very high rock sheer on- 
both sides; between these is an arch through wliich shallops and 
boats can pass at high water. At ebb tide one can walk from the 
mainland to the island, it being only four or five hundred steps." 

The great explorer and founder of Canada was not then seeing 
the rock as it stands today. This is evident on reading the later 
accounts. The single arch he describes may be that now repre- 
sented by the passage seaward between the rock and the obelisk, 
but it is clear tliat the single arch of today was not then in ex- 
istence. 

* Dcs Sauvages ou Voyage de Samuel Champlain de Brouage fait en la 
france Nouvelle I'an mil si.x cent trois. 1603. Chap. X. 



1 8 Sketches of Gaspe 

In 1672 Nicholas Denys, seignieur of Perce, " Gouveneur Lieu- 
tenant General pour le Roy, et Proprietaire de toutes les Terres et 
Isles qui sont depuis le Cap de Campseaux, jusques au Cap des 
Roziers," wrote :* " The Isle is a great rock which may be fifty to 
sixty fathoms in sheer height straight up from the foot of the two 
fides and has a width of three or four fathoms ; at low water one 
can go from the mainland by foot all round it; it may have a length 
of three hundred and fifty or four hundred fathoms ; it has been 
much longer, reaching even to the Island of Bonneaventure ; but 
the sea has devoured it at the foot so that it has fallen, and I have 
seen it when it had only one passage in the form of an arcade, 
through which a barge can pass at full sail. It is this which has 
given it the name of the Isle Percee. There have two others formed 
since, which are not so large but are growing all the time. It has 
the appearance that these passages weaken its foundation and will 
be the cause of its eventual destruction after which the sailors will 
no longer be able to work here. All of them that come here to 
fish cast anchor on the lee of this island, at a length of two cables 
off; one has here three or four fathoms of water, further off is a 
constantly increasing depth." 

Pere Sixte LeTac, who had visited the coast probably on his 
way to and from his mission in Newfoundland in 1689, spoke of 
the Rock as having but a single arch. 

Faucher St Maurice, in his charming and cleverly padded 
sketches of a short trip along this coast (1877), records having 
seen in the possession of Admiral Inglefield on board H. M. S. 
Bellerophon a copy of an engraving made in 1760 which repre- 
sented the rock with three arches through it. It has been my good 
fortune to obtain a copy of this old copper plate. Its date was the 
year after the fall of Quebec, and curiosity was doubtless keen 
enough in England over so remarkable a feature of her new con- 
quest to justify the execution of this expensive plate. It was 
" drawn by Captain Her'y Smyth on the spot," and the same pride 
that led the skippers of the i7oo's' to have their shi^s painted on 
Sunderland and Liverpool jugs, led him to put his frigate in the 
foreground of the picture. The Rock is here viewed from the 
north with Mt Joli at the right and Bonaventure at the left. Its 
arches are two in number, not three ; and though the rear arch 



* Description geographique et historique de Costes de I'Amerique septen- 
trionale. Avec I'histoire naturelle du Pais. 




^^^;. 















C3^.<'^.-y.y. 






alb* SPOTlyCaplHM/Suvrtli.EQgravcd IjrP.Ct 



The Scenery of the Mountains 19 

has now fallen it is noteworthy that the chief projections on the 
side of the Rock are essentially the same today as they were one 
hundred and forty-eight years ago. The distant view beyond the 
Rock shows the busy fishing fleet off the lower beach. 

Father LeClercq, who was stationed at Perce for twelve years 
from 1675 and again for a number of years after, interrupting 
his mission by a voyage to France, gave this description of the 
Rock, upon the accuracy of which we may rely, for it had been 
for all this time the most conspicuous object within his vision: 
" It," he says, referring to Gaspe Bay, " is only Seven Leagues 
from the Isle Percee which is not, as some imagine, an island 
capable of lodging inhabitants; because it is only a rough Rock 
steep on all sides, of an extraordinary height and a surprising ab- 
ruptness. It is so pierced by three or four distinct passageways 
that the barges pass full manned and at full sail through the largest 
of these openings. It is from this fact that it derives the name 
of risle Percee, although it is really only a peninsula or a 
Presqu'isle, of which one can easily make tlie circuit afoot when 
the sea is low; and resembles an island only at high water. It is 
separated from terra firma by only two or three acres [arpeiii^^ 
one hundred and eighty feet] of ground. It would seem as if it had 
formerly been joined thereto and that it had been cut off by the 
storms and tempests of the ocean."''' . 

The discrepancy in these accounts may arise from some dis- 
agreement between the dates of observation and of publication, 
but they can be reconciled to this conclusion, that the arches during 
the period of Denys's observation had grown from one to three 
or four and probably one of these had soon thereafter fallen in. 
Reliance apparently can not be placed on LeTac's account. 

I find no other descriptive account of the Rock throughout the 
whole of the eighteenth century and up to the time when the 
Abbe Ferland wrote of his missionary visitation along this coast in 
1836. Ferland 's stay at Perce was brief, not more than two or 
three days duration, and much of the material of his entertaining 
narrative was derived from other than original sources. Of the 
Rock he says :* 

" The Isle Percee appears to have been formerly joined to J\It 
Joli ; it is separated therefrom only by a straight channel which is 
dry at low water. The length of the plateau is about eight acres 



*Xouvclle Relation de la Gaspesie, 1691, pp. 4, 5. 



20 Sketches of Gasps 

and its width is reckoned at only from sixty to eighty feet. In it.-> 
entire extent the rock is only a continuous cliff, the average height 
of which is two hundred and ninety feet. ■■' '^ -^^ The waves 
* * '^ have already cut out two arches remarkable for regu- 
larity. * =^ * The open passages in the rock are about twenty- 
five feet wide, twenty feet in height and thirty in length. Through 
the principal arch the barges can pass at all times either under sail 
or by oars ; through the other they can only float when the sea is 
high. The debris of the rock scattered all along bears witness that 
the sea is continuing its encroachments. Some day, perhaps, the 
arches will gradually fall in and the Isle Percee will form three 
immense columns which will rival in volume the pyramids of 
Egypt." 

Sir William Logan was at Perce in 1843 on his first field work 
as director of the Canadian Geological Survey. \Miile at the vil- 
lage he put up with a J\Ir Moriarty and in the fragments of his 
journal which have been published by the late Professor Har- 
rington* he says that his host fornierly cut hay on the top of the 
Rock, but had abandoned his farming there some six years before, 
as a foolhardy fellow by the name of Pierre L'Egle took it into 
his head to dance on a projecting piece of rock which gave way 
and he was dashed to death on the beach. It seems indeed to have 
been common practise in the early days when clearings were small 
to take the hay from the summit of the Rock and to gather the sea 
birds' eggs. Today the angles of the Rock are so changed that to 
climb it seems beyond human daring. 

On the 17th of June, 1845, the outer arch in the Rock fell. ]\Iy 
informant, Mr Phillip Le Boutillier, an engaging and vigorous man 
of more than eighty years and a companion of Logan in the 
forties, says that as he was on that day turning the key in the 
door of the Le Boutillier Co.'s store, he was startled by an ear- 
splitting and thunderous crash and turning toward the Rock saw 
that amid clouds of dust and spray and the terrified screams of 
the birds, the outer and greater arch had fallen. And thus it 
stands today with but one of the three or four arches on which 
the eyes of Denys and LeClercq so often looked, remaining, and a 
new one creeping at right angles to the rest, lengthwise through 
the base of the seaward obelisk. Here we behold, as under the 
eye, the ruin which the sea has wrought on this single isolated rock 

* Life of Sir William Logan, Montreal, 1883. 



I'hc Scenery of the Moniitaiiis 21 

in the last two hundred and fifty years. I find on carefully com- 
paring my measurements with the dimensions which can be de- 
rived from the Crown Land maps of I'erctS the original draft of 
which is not far from fifty years old, that there is no apparent 
change of proportions in this interval except in a lessening diameter 
at certain points. 

It is not often that a geologist gets hold of a profxisition so 
■concrete and uncomplicated as that which an isolated mass like 
Perce Rock presents. A simple combination of two causes has 
contributed to the destruction of this mass, the sea and the frost. 
The destruction has gone on by leaps and bounds in the falling of 
arches carrying down thousands of tons of rock at a time, though 
the times were at distant intervals. But the steady work of the 
less destructive agents never ceases. From Nicholas Denys's state- 
ment in 1672, that on his first trip to Perce there was only one 
arch in the Rock, as Champlain saw it in 1603, but when he re- 
turned some years later he observed two others, and that subse- 
quently in his day one of the latter broke down, it is evident that 
the progress of destruction then went on at a rapid pace compared 
with its advance during the last century. But these arches have 
all been at the thin outer edge of the clifif which easily became 
honeycombed. This thinner part of the Rock is now nearly gone 
and the waters have a more serious problem before them. A thing 
of singular beauty indeed the long rock with its three or four 
arches, in the days of the i6oo's, must have been. Today its pro- 
portions are more stable, for the single perforation lies under one 
of the highest parts. Its rearward obelisk is giving way and is 
perforated at its base, but the s])lcndi(l mass itself is not percep- 
tibly thinning to destruction. Let us look a little to its future. 

Perce Rock is six hundred feet from Mt Joli along the sandbar 
•over which one still walks at low tide. There is a beach on both 
sides for a part of the distance at low tide but it is an uncertain 
thing, disappearing at high water except in retreats on the north 
shore, and at no time can one make the circuit of the rock by foot. 
It is two hundred and eighty-eight feet high at the prow, two hun- 
<lred and fifteen feet high at the arch and one hundred and fifty- 
four feet high at its outer end ; it is fourteen hundred and twenty 
feet long, fifteen hundred and sixty-five feet from prow to outer 
end of the obelisk ; it is about three hundred feet wide in its widest 
parts. The part of the Rock exposed above the water weighs about 
four million tons. 



22 Sketches of Gaspc 

From the broken vertical strata of its cliffs, fragments fall easily 
and the winter's storms and frosts bring down large masses. Yet 
its blocks are wedged in tight, and in roving back and forth 
at the foot of the cliff day after day, I have not observed the 
actual fall of a single large piece. However, the base of the cliff 
is covered with large masses and the shores of ]\It Joli made up 
of the fragments washed from the Rock. The most striking pile 
of fallen blocks now lies on the north side at one of the projecting 
angles and is composed of ten to twenty pieces weighing from 
five to ten tons each. They are the accumulations of no one 
seems to know how many years. I have found no one ready to 
venture a suggestion as to how much of this rock falls annually. 
Certainly more comies down in some years than others, and the fall 
of an arch would break all averages. This latter factor, however, 
is now practically eliminated. After careful observation I should 
regard three hundred tons a year a fair average, five hundred 
tons a year large, one thousand tons most exceptional. With the 
first approximation it will take sea and weather upward of thirteen 
thousand years to accomplish the ruin of the cliff'; with the second, 
eight thousand, with the third, four thousand. Unborn generations 
of Gaspesians will gaze upon the undimmed luster of this magnifi- 
cent cliff'. 

I oft'er the foregoing prophecy as an oblation to the Genie de 
risle Percee. She has had her own troubles and I would not add 
to them. " Many myths have grown up about this rock,"' says one 
writer naively, after telling a marvelous tale of the unceasing 
battles between the feathered dwellers on its summit, cormorants 
against gulls, whenever one of either kind, big with temerity, 
ventures over the rigidly drawn and closely guarded boundaries 
of the other's domain, splitting the heavens with their militant out- 
cry. Here it is that Captain Duval the freebooter of Bonaventure 
Island, buried his treasure chests for the future to reveal. 

The strata of Perce Rock teem with fossils. There are the 
strange denizens of the ancient sea in which these strata were laid 
down as sediments, brachiopods of many species, bivalves, limpets 
and whelks and trilobites. The most striking of them all are the 
trilobites, ancient precursors of the lobsters of the coves. Here 
are to be found the remains of one of the largest of these creatures 
known, the Da'inanites Pcrceensis, which was sometimes two feet 
long, and another, D. Biardi, with a trident oii his nose. One could 




The Ml'raili.es From ^NIt Joli 



The Scenery of the Mountains 23 

not work over a ton of this rock without finding at least a score 
of these crustaceans. Let us suppose there is one in each of tl:e 
four million tons. There is also a singularly graceful brachiopod 
known as Chonetes Canadensis. It would be hard to dissect an 
avergage ton of the Rock without turning out these by hundreds. 
Let us say one hundred ; then Perce Rock contains at least four 
million trilobites and four hundred million specimens of CJwnctcs 
Canadensis. Other species in their order, there are many of them, 
i.nd these are but samples. But my figures are absurdly small. Let 
them serve to convey some notion of the enormous profusion of life 
represented in this little section of the ancient ocean bed and give 
an added feature of interest to this attractive spot. 

If one needed proof that the sea has always been the alma nntrix 
of life, here it is, not to be surpassed in the daily scenes which 
have been enacted along the Gaspe coast for more than two hun- 
dred and fifty years in the codfishing. Millions of cod are yearly 
taken from these waters, but like the widow's cruse of oil, they 
fail not. If all these millions of all these years were added to- 
getlier they would not equal in number the remains of the animals 
now lying embedded in the Perce Rock. 

* * * 

It is the extraordinary destruction of the limestone cliffs that 
gives to Perce much of its picturesqueness. Aside from the Pierced 
Rock we have evidence of this in the serrated cliffs of the ]\Iurailles, 
which rise from the water to six hundred feet in concave fronts, 
the almost vanished remnant of a majestic mountain which partly 
spanned the jMalbay. The Murailles begin with low Cape Barre 
at the and of the North Beach and the rocks rise higher and higher 
to the climax in double pointed Red Peak, beyond which lies the 
lofty fault-scarp of the Grande Coupe. They, too, like the Perce 
Rock, are brilliantly tinted and both are geologically the same, 
though in the sea-wracked topography they seem to have belonged 
to dift'erent mountains. 

To the series of limestone cliffs here, belong the gray Mt Joli and 
Cape Canon, whose escarpments divide the North and South 
beaches. They too stand with strata erect, parallel with those of 
Perce Rock from which the sunken outer reefs of Mt Joli are not 
more than fifty feet away in the line of their courses. These are 
but low and sombre headlands, handmaidens of Perce Rock which 
shines more brilliantly by their presence. 



:24 Sketches of Gaspe 

It adds greatly to the appreciation of this scenery to notice th 

singularly interesting geological relations of the rock strata in thes 

cliffs. As we judge the situation, Perce Rock and all the strata of M 

Joli are a continuous series of deposits, of which the Rock is the top 

most and youngest member. All have been overturned so far ths 

the oldest strata (Mts Joli and Canon) actually lie sloping again' 

the younger. They are not, like the Forillon, the souther 

^lope of a great fold, but rather the steeper northern declivity o 

•such a fold of which little is left but these specters of a giant pas 

In this succession of rocks from Cape Canon to the Perce, th 

geologist finds something missing. The open interval between th 

Perce and Mt Joli is not enough to make restitution of the los 

l)ut the missing link in the chain is Cape Barre at the norther 

€nd of the upper beach. The great strains and stresses in tl: 

earth's crust, that accomplished the overturn of two thousand fe( 

of limestone strata, broke through the rock masses where now 

the interval between Perce Rock and the mainland, and as thej 

great masses slipped one against the other like mighty millston( 

they squeezed out a part of the series which is now represented i 

the rocks of Barre. There was never a connection between tl' 

Rock and the cliffs of Bonaventure Island, save as the latter ma 

liave overlain the former, but the cliffs of the Rock are of one piec 

w^ith the red limestones of the Murailles from which they have bee 

cut off by another profound shattering and displacement of tl' 

masses. Again we find the limestone cliffs standing in erect stral 

at Cape Blanc or Whitehead, two miles south of Perce village an 

here rising to a great height in a sheer wall, accessible only from tt 

Avater. The view which one gets in passing this headland by wat( 

from the north is singularly interesting, showing first the near' 

vertical red limestones followed at the south by the white stra' 

which give to the place its name. On both sides the limestones ai 

overlain by the horizontal conglomerates of later age and the form( 

look as if they had been thrust up through the latter. These lim 

stones make no other conspicuous features in the scenery but th< 

run inland through the west foot of Perce Mountain as far as Iris! 

town and to Corner of the Beach and in Hayes's brook where tl 

Perce road crosses in climbing up Whitehead, one can look ov 

the bridge and see the same limestones thrown out of their vertic 

position and lying almost flat. These limestones are all a part < 

the great system at Perce, fitting into the series somewhere near tl 

hiatus between the Rock and Mt Joli. 




Pkrle — A'lEw From iiik :\Iuk. 



AiLLES SnuwiNi, Bunaven;lre Island, the Pierced Rock and Mt Joli 



The Scenery of the Mountains 25 

III 

TJie Sandstoies — Gaspe Basin — Scenery of Gaspe Basin — The 
"Admiral " — Gaspe Bay — Rocks in Art 

We have spoken thus far particularly only of the scenery which 
belongs to the limestone mountains and their ragged coast lines. 
There is a very close dependence between the appearance of a 
mountain in the landscape and the texture of the rock that com- 
poses it, so that after all we are thrown back to a consideration of 
these mountains according to their kind. 

On top of the limestone strata lies an enormous series of sand- 
stones, folded and broken ; no one knows their thickness. This 
tremendous mantle of rocks spreads inland from Little Gaspe on 
the Forillon, from Point St Peter and Malbay, covers all the 
country about Gaspe Basin and constitutes the rough ranges of 
the interior. Sir William Logan estimated these rocks to be about 
seven thousand feet thick, but though this may be an overstatement 
because of some possible repetition of the strata by displacement 
yet there is thickness enough to make very majestic elevations if 
the whole or greater part were exposed at any one point. The in- 
terior of Gaspe County is a heavily wooded, tenantless domain,, 
still a place of trails and portages, as little reduced to the pursuits 
and demands of civilization as the interior of Patagonia. But 
mountains of the same type as those further inland, though of 
gentler expression, are those which circle the Gaspe Basin. Here, 
withdrawn from the fierce play of the Gulf storms, the softer and 
rounder outlines prevail. The Northwest and Southw^est Arms of 
the Bay, continuing into the Dartmouth and York rivers, run back 
along ancient depressions or troughs in the folded rocks. Gaspe 
village is at the axilla of these arms. If the traveler will let his 
rambles lead him around the ci-est of Cape O'Hara and down the 
raised sea beach below St Albert's Church he may observe the san.i- 
stone foundations of Gaspe Alountain sloping at a steep angle 
toward the north and he may follow them for a long distance up the 
Dartmouth river, to the volcanic dike at L'Anse au Cousins and 
beyond, always at this inclination. Across the Northwest Arm 
above Peninsula he will find them sloping south, the two slopes 
meeting in a trough at the bottom of the Bay. Let him follow the 
shore southward from the inner docks among the Robin fishing 
stores and on toward Gaspe South, or along the road on the other 
side of the York, and he may note that the rocks soon dip in just 



26 Sketches of Gaspe 

the reverse direction to that at the Dartmouth, pitching downward 
to the south. The crest of the great fold of the strata passes 
through Gaspe Mountain not far away from Baker's hotel. As 
the hills rise behind this delightful little village " where, says Fer- 
land, "live the aristocrats of Gaspe," the bending of the strata 
brings the limestones, which he buried beneath the sandstones, to the 
surface at the highest summits. One may follow the old portage 
trail from the clearing back of Baker's up through the woods over 
the first mountain but only the sandstones will appear. If he will 
take a more strenuous walk and climb the second mountain, sepa- 
rated from the first by the portage road running from L'Anse au 
Cousins to Gaspe South, there at the tops he will find the lime- 
stones broken through the strata which lie over them. It may be 
well to reflect on what this phenomenon signifies. If, say five 
thousand feet of sandstones with two thousand feet of limestones 
beneath them have been folded up into mountains, then the 
limestones can be exposed from under their mantle only in one 
or both of two ways. Either the rock masses have been cracked 
and broken and by slipping apart have exposed the lower beds, 
or the entire overlying mass on the crest of the fold has been worn 
away. I think it likely that the two causes have conspired in giving 
the hills their present form, but it is evident that there has been a 
removal of tremendous volumes of rock, partly by the slow process 
of natural decay and partly by the agency of ice and water. The 
hills of Gaspe Basin and the higher summits of the interior would 
together constitute a great plateau were it not for the distant folds 
which traverse it like that which crosses Gaspe Basin. 

The scenery of the Basin is a restful contrast to that outside. 
Had the wasting forces which have worn off the summits of the 
hills gone farther down about the limestones they would have left 
more ragged crests behind them, but the softer sandstones have 
made only gentle curves. There is but little room on the shores of 
the beautiful Basin between the water and mountain, but from 
L' Anse au Cousins around to Gaspe South the slopes have been 
brought under cultivation and the spruce and fir driven upward. 
There are not many sights so inviting as the outlook from the height 
of these clearings down the Bay, around through the narrow pas- 
sage where the great bars of Sandy Beach and the Peninsula nearly 
strangle the waterway, down along the hills of the Forillon to Cape 
Gaspe ; and in the other direction the eye follows the shore .line from 
Cape Ramsay along the course of the Basin, which is bounded by ;i 




o 



The Scenery of the Mountains 27 

rising summit of like hills. The Basin is a harbor of such dimen- 
sions and absolute security that it is full of craft of many kinds, the 
schooners of the fishing establishments, the luggers of coastwise 
trade, the cruisers of the cable inspection and fisheries service, the 
packet-boats to Anticosti and the Labrador, now and then a pleasure 
yacht ; when the sea is heavy outside, the fishing barges come scurry- 
ing in by scores ; there is the tug, which does the ferry to Peninsula, 
the flats and scows of the ferry to York, every week the Quebec 
steamers, and twice a week the classical old sidewheeler that plies 
back and forth into Chaleur Bay.* 

From Gaspe eastward through Haldimand and Douglastown the 
same sandstones extend, making low rocky shores, but changing 
in color from gray shades into red, and forming the red banks of 
the south shores of the 'Bay to Point St Peter. Here they face 
the Gulf and, though still low, the waters have played havoc with 
them. These rocks are sometimes very coarse and the play of the 
waves readily works them out into caverns and grottoes. At Point 
St Peter the waters have cut off little Plateau Island and honey- 
combed it with holes like the subterranean workings of a giant mole. 

The sublimity and grandeur of a rock formation can be 'displayed 
only in cliff or crag or mountain peak, but its beauty is often veiled 
until it plays its part in the realization of some grand creation of 
the artist or some poem of the architect. The great buildings of 
the world are the exaltation and the dignification of its rocks. 
Art alone has known how to elicit from them the qualities which 
in combination contribute to the highest intellectual enjoyment. 
The finest specimen in the world of the Old Red Sandstone of 
Scotland, the formation that Hugh Aliller loved to describe, is 
Skibo Castle, and the most striking example of the Gaspe sand- 
stones, which are of the same geological formation, is the new 
church of St Michel at Perce., whose walls have just reached com- 

* This refers to the venerable and historic "Admiral," familiar to many a 
traveler to Gaspe. She is said to have been a once honored member of the 
American navy, specially detailed to the service of the President of the 
United States during the administration of General Grant. For years she 
plied this Gaspe route, and when her sorely strained timbers seemed too far 
gon6 for the buffetings of the Gulf storms, she would be transferred to 
some other service, but always to reappear in Gaspe. She was burned at 
her dock soon after the words above were written, and her ser\-ice has 
been taken over first by the " Lady Eileen, which went aground on a 
reef in Newport harbor and lately by the " Lady Sybil " which still makes 
the route. 



28 Sketches of Gaspe 

pletion. The soft red brown of the body stone, reheved by the 
spots made by the shale pebbles in them, lends a dignity to the fine 
lines of tlie majestic and beautiful building; while a too sombre 
effect is relieved by sills and lintels of a green freestone. The 
finished edifice is a glorification of Nature's crude product. 

IV 

The Mountains of the St Lawrence — Cape Rosier to Grande 
Vallec — The Shickshocks 

The sorely twisted and crumpled rocks which one passes on the 
south shore of the St Lawrence beyond Cape Rosier in the cliffs 
toward Ste Anne des Monts belong to another series of formations 
and produce another style of contours in the landscape. Cruising 
along the shore one is impressed by the long and even-topped 
curves of the summits whose fronts have been laid bare by the 
devouring waters. These are old and planed contour lines such 
as express mountains long exposed, and the rocks themselves show 
that they were turned up into folds and troughs before the lime- 
stones of the Forillon, which lie upon them but at an angle to their 
own crumpled strata. The streams which have crept their way 
through them show their youth in their sharp slopes, and at their 
unioti with the St Lawrence one may often see the elevated wave- 
cut cliff's which show how greatly the coast has been elevated in 
these later times. Back behind the shore cliffs in the upper reaches 
of the Ste Anne and Madeleine rivers rise the majestic peaks of 
the Shickshocks, the mountains that Champlain called the Xotre 
Dame. Here in a still trackless wilderness, where few save the 
lumberman, the salmon fisher and the hunter ever penetrate, lies 
the innermost axis of this Appalachian region, for these mountains- 
are the granite backbone of the entire peninsula. 



Thf. Great Rock Polls and Troughs' 

Fold I, The Forillon — Fold 2, Gaspc Mountain — Fold s, ^'^f 
Point — Fold 4, Point St Peter — Fold 5, Perce — The Bays and 
Riz'crs — Barachois, Bar and Tickle 

\\t have made constant reference to these ancient Appalachians, 
but we wish to speak of the system in its parts, for upon it rests 
all the superstructure of Gaspe scenery. All the ages of time which 
have lapsed since the crumpling of the crust upturned these giant 
folds have not served to obliterate their traces or to still hold every 
important feature of the landscape in conformity with them. The 
granite core or axis of the entire system is to be seen only in the 
Shickshocks. and about this axis rest the earlier rock formations 
skirting the shore of the St Lawrence. So intricately have these 
latter and older rocks been crumpled that the outline of their folds 
is no longer apparent on the surface. They were caught in the 
earliest upturning of the crust, long before the grander curves of 
the more southern country were made. Of later date than these 
are the five great rock folds, like as many mighty waves, 
which run inland from the coast bearing off in a broad curve nearly 
parallel to the St Lawrence. All have resulted from the thrust of 
the soft shale, limestone and sandstone beds against the great 
Laurentian shield of hard granites lying north of the St Lawrence, 
and it was this thrust and downbreaking of these soft rocks against 
the Laurentian shield that outlined the course of this most ancient 
of rivers. As made out by Sir William Logan, the crests of these 
great rock waves have the following courses. 

The first and northernmost is that which makes the Forillon. No 
one knows where its nortiiern slope came down, but the arch 
spanned over into the broad mouth of the St Lawrence, and only 
its southern flank remains. This fold runs inland, capped by sand- 
stones on its southern slope, to the far upper reaches of the Dart- 
mouth river. From Shiphead to the head of the Northwest Arm 
and beyond one sees the rocks constantly dipping to the south under 
the Bay. 

The second of these folds is of much less amplitude and its axis 
runs through Gaspe Basin, for as we have noticed above, the rocks 
at the Basin slope to the north on the shore of the Northwest Arm 
and to the south at tlie upper end of Southwest Arm and the flexure 

[25] 



30 Sketches of Gasps 

runs under the waters of the Bay at Cape Haldimand. In the old 
trough between waves one and two lies Gaspe Bay and along its 
course the Dartmouth river runs for many miles. 

Fold No. 3 starts at Tar Point opposite Grande Greve and keeps 
its parallel course with the others far to the mountains of the in- 
terior. Between the Cape Haldimand and Tar Point anticlines lies 
th^ barachois at Douglastown and the Southwest Arm^ remnants 
of the sea that once entered this old trough. 

Fold No. 4 makes its appearance on the coast at Whalehead or 
Point St Peter running back into the distant hills with limestone 
tops, and between this and the Tar Point anticlines lie long parts 
of the courses of the York river, running into the Southwest Arm, 
and the St John which empties into the barachois at Douglastown. 
Like other rivers in all parts of the Appalachian mountain system, 
the Dartmouth, York and St John have had the fashion of cutting 
their way across the folds in their newer and more active upper 
reaches. 

Fold No. 5, the southernmost yet located, shows itself in the 
upturned limestones of Perce and curves inward along the southern- 
most stretch of limestone rocks. Between its sea end and that of 
St Peter lies Malbay and its barachois, marking the effort of the 
sea to enter this ancient trough. On the backs of all these major 
folds ride lesser ones like ripples on. a great wave, and at Perce, 
as we have noticed, the fold has been completely broken down and 
its parts displaced as shown in the Murailles and the cliffs of White- 
head. 

It may hardly do to say that the pr-esent bays and rivers of- 
Gaspe are the residua of the ancient encroachments of the sea into 
the rock troughs, but they demonstrate this old topography most 
effectively. The entrance of the bays into these troughs has been 
aided by the depression of all the coastal region, and I think it 
quite probable that Gaspe Bay, that at Douglastown and the Malbay 
are of comparatively recent date. More recent still is the elevation 
of the land at the head of Gaspe Bay indicated by the raised 
beaches of sand and gravel. This evidence is supplemented by the 
shoaling of the Northwest and Southwest Arms. Our hydro- 
graphic map shows how these broad arms are shallowing, their 
upper reaches being only tidal flats through which the currents of 
the river steer an uncertain course. The increase in the bars across 
the upper end of Gaspe Bay, the long sand spit of Sandy Beach 
on the south, the broad triangle of Peninsula vis-a-vis and the 



The Great Rock Folds and Trotighs 31 

growing difficulties for vessels in keeping a clear passage through 
the narrow channel between the two, is evidence of like import. 
Likewise extensive shoals fill the lower course of the St John river. 
I am inclined to believe that when the general depression of the 
land surface gave to the Arms of the Bay their farthest extent in- 
land, the discharge of the York river was not into the Basin, but 
southward to the Douglastown barachois, behind the sandstone 
ridge of Haldimand town. When the topography of the county shall 
have been more exactly charted, and we know the elevation and 
courses of the mountains and divides of the interior, it will doubt- 
less become apparent that its drainage ways have undergone notable 
rearrangement. 

Baracliois, Bar and Tickle. With a singular uniformity the bays 
of Gaspe, large and small, are equipped \N\t\\ bars which nearly 
sever them from the sea. A sandbar, as everyone knows, is an 
equilibrium line or line of rest between opposing bodies of water 
and as between inland and ocean waters are where the sediment- 
loaded streams are opposed by the sea and drop their load while 
current and tide conspire to keep a narrow^ passage open. This 
style of bar-building could not be better expressed than at Douglas- 
town, where the bar, lying just within the coast-line, is parted in 
the middle by the " tickle," or inlet into the " barachois," the shallow 
w^ater of the bay. The traveler by land from the Basin to Douglas- 
town drives down one arm of the bar, is ferried over the tickle and 
continues his journey along the other arm, a ticklish trip indeed if 
the weather be heavy outside. I believe this word " tickle " owes 
its origin to the subjective sensations of the traveler wdio finds the 
passage across often rough and dangerous. On the Newfoundland 
and the Cape Breton coast it seems to be used in a broader sense and 
may be applied to broken reefs w'ith dangerous passages, but here 
in Gaspe it is even gradually departing from its strict reference to 
a passage through the bar, for at the ]\Ialbay w^e find the stream 
entering the barachois. called the Tickle itdet. Barachois, thinks 
the Abbe Ferland, is the barre-cheois, that part protected from the 
tumble of the waves. Perhaps it is the barre-ecJiue, the waters 
protected by a bar. The word is distinctly Canadian, it will not be 
found in a Parisian dictionary, but it is often pronounced even by 
the Canadians in defiance of the spelling as though it were derived 
in the latter way, barasJnvay. 

At Malbay the barachois is tucked away at the head of the broad 
embavment of the coast and the tickle which cuts its long: and 



32 Sketches of Gaspe 

narrow bar is close to the north shore. All along the southern 
sweep of the Gaspe coast these barachois are found; and Gaspe 
Bay itself, like the rest, has its bar, tickle and barachois; the tickle 
being the narrow and parlous ship passage between the long bar 
of Sandy Beach and the broad Peninsula, each of these bars being 
the equilibrium line of the stream currents above, the Peninsula of 
the Dartmouth and Sandy Beach of the York. Within this bar is 
the barachois of Gaspe Bay. Students of physiography seeking 
appropriate designations for the expression of topographic forms 
arising from uniform causes may well take notice of these terms, 
tickle and barachois. 

These little coastal lagoons have very interesting problems of 
their own. The fish and other aquatic creatures in the barachois 
differ from those outside the bar. Inside, the washing of the rivers 
is bringing down fragments of plant and other terrestrial life and 
depositing them amongst the brackish water creatures whose natural 
home is in the lagoon, while in times of stress outside, the heavy 
seas wash over the bar and mingle the true marine life with that 
within. At the ebb of the tide and in the sunlight the acids of 
organic decomposition stain the muds with iron oxide tints of red 
and yellow. Let us suppose all the deposits of the barachois dried 
out and turned to rock. Conceive that they come under the ham- 
mer of the geologist of some future day. He finds that most of 
their layers contain a mixture of land plants and brackish animal 
remains, while every now and then is a layer of rock which con- 
tains only the shells and skeletons of true sea life. This is very 
much what we find today in the immense series of sandstones that 
make up the hills of Gaspe village and the great interior. There 
are layers which contain only the remains of terrestrial plants which 
grew along the ancient coast and its streams. Then heavy deposits 
of sand and gravel with little trace of any life, laid down along a 
shallow tide-swept shore, and every now and then, as in the rocks of 
Gaspe Mountain, a layer redounding in the remains of sea animals, 
swept in from the deeper water. So we are justified in concluding 
that much of these sandstones were deposited in some great embay- 
ment of old Gaspe, stretching far inland and into which the 
deeper sea overrushed in time of storm carrying its peculiar life 
forms with it. Thus what is going on today on the coast, wherever 
a considerable stream enters the Gulf or its bays, was going on in 
ancient Gaspe on a majestic scale in that gray day when the founda- 
tions of the country were being laid. 



Perce Mountain 

Table-d-rolante — Mt Ste Anne — Its red conglomerates — Their, 
extent to Bonaventure Island — Destruction by the sea — The 
vision on Mt Ste Anne — The coast at Force rising 

We have spoken of the folded mountains. The most far-reaching 
sky-hne on the whole Gaspe coast, one which first catches the 
traveler's eye in passing through the outer reaches of Chaleur Bay, 
or in crossing over the Northumberland Strait from Prince Edward 
Island, or in rounding the Cape of the Forillon from the north, 
is that of Perce Mountain. From either side its cluster of curves is 
seen to run only a little back from the coast, and on closer approach, 
as one swings to in the Perce harbor, its eastward summit is seen 
to have on its shoreward face a flat top and a sheer front, an ele- 
vated table sloping slightly to the north. This easternmost member 
of the Perce Mountain is Mt Ste Anne. It was the Table-a- 
rolante of the earlier writers, Champlain and Denys, and even of 
Ferland; Denys says " elle est platte et de forme carree, ce qui 
luy a donne ce nom," but some indifferent person afterward 
wrote the name Table-a-Rolland, and so it has been often printed. 
The traveler in search of the picturesque will cross the mountain 
cluster by the " long road " to Corner of the Beach. When he has 
rounded the seaward plateau and skirted its more precipitous rear 
face, rising in the concave sheer cliff of the " amphitheater," he may 
well wonder whence has gone the rest of this great rock mantle 
whose edges here show that it must have once swept far hence to 
the south. It is the " short cut '' or new road over these summits, 
however, which brings out their finest effects. Regardless of grades 
and hugging the Malbay, this course brings into view the impressive 
majesty of peaks and gorge on one side and the high plateau on 
the other. It is long since the mountain was turned over to the 
guardianship of Sainte Anne, and as far back as 1675 Father Enjal- 
ran landing at Perce, found its summit plateau crowned with a 
cross. Perce Mountain is the highest point on all the coast. It 
rises to one thousand two hundred and thirty feet at its highest, 
but Ste Anne reaches only one thousand one hundred. Filling all 
the foreground t)f Perce from the Malbay to Cape Blanc and run- 
ning inland a distance of two leagues, it adds the climax to the 
picturesqueness of Perce village. Over its northward and gentler 
3 {^^^ 



34 - Sketches of Gaspe 

slopes pious ardor has cut out through the spruce and fir a broad 
and grassy way to the shrine on its top ; on its eastern side, facing 
the village, the rock falls straight down for half its height, showing 
the gently sloping brilliant red strata. 

These rock strata lie almost fiat over the southernmost of the 
great rock folds and troughs we have been discussing. It will 
readily be seen that to account for these deposits spread over the old 
hills and valleys, the whole foundation had to be carried down be- 
neath the water, so in that submergence the sea overran the land 
vastly more than it does today and has been driven out by the great 
elevation of the whole coast. These rocks are chiefly red con- 
glomerates made up of pebbles of jasper and agate, but there are 
among them many pieces of limestone containing the fossils so 
characteristic of Perce Rock and washed out of the old limestone 
cliffs. They do not extend far back from the coast, no farther than 
the general mass of Perce Mountain and the region about Malbay,. 
but the roots of Perce Mountain run down the very shore of Perce 
village. One can here see the lowest layers of these red rocks 
where the conglomerates overlap the limestones of Red Peak, in the 
upper part of the coulee leading down to the north beach; on the 
north beach itself and in the interval between the south flank of 
Mt Joli and Cape Canon the soil cap is tinged with red, indicating 
the not far distant presence of these beds. Below the Robin beach, 
and thence southward to Cape Blanc, these red strata extend all 
the way till one reaches the red and white vertical limestones of 
that headland of which wS have just spoken. Then they take up 
their horizontal course beyond Cape Blanc southward through 
L'Anse au Beaufils, L'Anse du Cap and to Cape d'Espoir. This is 
about their southern limit for Gaspe County, their northern this side 
of Point St Peter, their western at the inner foot of Perce Mountain, 
but their eastern, no man yet knoweth. The reefs off Robin beacli 
are of these rocks and so is the entire island of Bonaventure. It is. 
not far from three miles from the Robin beach to Bonaventure 
Island over a depth of water which nowhere reaches one hundred 
feet. The sheet of conglomerates was once continuous across the 
interval and beyond for an unknown distance. We believe that this 
great mass of coarse deposits was laid down on an open and wave- 
beaten coast, and they carry in themselves the record of that ancient 
sea whose waves were even then eternally pounding against the coast 
cliffs. All the limestone cliffs of the Forillon and the sandstone 
hills of Gaspe Bay and the interior were above water then as today,. 




Ph 



Pcrc-c Mountain 35 

though grander and more majestic in their proportions. There are 
a thousand feet in thickness of these conglomerates to be accounted 
for in the channel between the shore and iionaventure and outside 
of Bonaventure itself. To some extent no doubt they have been 
carried down by the depression of the land, but the sheer eastern 
face of Ste Anne and the rounding slopes of its rocks as they extend 
shoreward are indications that the sea has gnawed at these heights, 
too, and the wall of Ste Anne is an. elevated sea cliff pushed back 
from its old place at the water's edge by the rising of the floor 
of the Gulf. 

77; t' rision oji Mt Ste Anne 

Ongwe, Chief of the Gaspesian Souriquois, had returned with his 
people from the winter encampment about the far headwaters of the 
St John. Half buried beneath the snow, their skin-covered cabins 
had comfortably resisted the season's downfall, and the hunt had 
brought forth abundance of food and clothing for all the small 
flock. An early breakdown of the snows was probable, a few 
bright days had softened them, loosed the ice-setting of the streams, 
and thus with their peltries the chief had led them back over the 
trail to the shore much earlier than it was his wont to abandon 
winter quarters. It lacked but little of the Equinox, to these wor- 
shippers of the Sun the most solemn feast of the year. It was 
seldom that this day of ceremonial found Ongwe and his people so- 
near the coast and at the foot of the Perce Mountain. The trail 
had been long and heavy, for the rac|uettes sank deep into the soft- 
ening, sloppy snow. But there was no spoken expression of weari- 
ness, a serene contentment lay in the vivacious eyes wdiich looked 
out from under the stolid brow of the Sagamo. 

It was the feast of the Sun, and long before that orb had flushed 
the eastern sky with the faintest suggestion of his approach, while 
the stars still shone with the white fire of burning steel and the 
shimmering sheets of the aurora lit up the celestial vault, the 
chieftain aroused his people from their shortened slumber. Sire, 
seer and lad, maid, matron and babe on back, led by Ongwe, leav- 
ing their encampment under the shelter of the sea-wall, trailed 
slowly through the unbroken snow of the spruce woods up the 
long northern slope of the great mountain. The difficult passage 
was made in silence save for the crackling of the twigs and the 
sharp creak of the frost. Half way up the gentler slope was 
passed and the steep plateau lowered over them. Turning eastward 



36 Sketches of Gaspe 

the chieftain saw the sun-star, herald of the coming god, blazing 
his course above the horizon and a low word of urgent command 
renewed their upward progress. The last hard slopes were finally 
passed and the gentle floor of the summit was reached as the red- 
dening east betokened the coming of the equinoctial sun. 

Standing at the crest and on the edge of the sharp cliff, his people 
behind him, the Sagamo stood attent. The increasing glow in the 
east outlined the distant Bonaventure Island and silhouetted the 
Perce Rock. Over the glistening water, beyond the frozen channel, 
the soft refulgence deepened into a golden orange. The fires 
burned, the red cliffs of the mountain caught the warmer rays and 
the shadowy outline of the sea cliffs at the south became fixed. An 
arc of gold breached the horizon. As it reached the eye of the 
chieftain, he threw from him his cloak of castor, his deerskin shirt 
and clout, loosed from his feet the mooseskin moccasins. Naked as 
he was born, and rigid as if dead, he stood in the presence of the 
Lord of Day. While the sun traversed the skyline, and till its 
lowest arc rebounded from the lingering clasp of the sea, he stood 
as if carved from the mountain. When it had cleared itself and the 
day had begun, the chieftain lifted up his arms extended wide 
apart in adoration, and cried aloud. Ho! Ho! Ho!* After him 
the little multitude behind thus saluted the god of light and warmth 
and life, herald of a new summer. With uplifted arms, he poured 
forth his supplication to the divine arc for his people and himself, 
bowing himself low as he prayed for the safe-keeping of their 
wives and children, for triumph over their enemies, for success in 
the hunt and fishing, for the preservation of their life and a long 
posterity. The eyes of the chieftain now yielding before the darts 
of the Sun god, he drew his discarded garments about him and then 
gazed in silence over the wondrous scene spread out before him. 
The day had risen clear as ice, and the first of the sun's rays drove 
before them a gauze of fog which lifting, tinged with carmine the 
thin blue line of the distant Forillon, its wavy summits, its bluff 
headland and towering obelisk. In the nearer distance, across the 
northern bay, Point St Peter and its island took on the dark 
strength of the full day while the shimmering light of waters danced 
gleefully against the ice floes. Straight^ down between his feet lay 
the triangle of Perce headed by Mont Joli, flanked at the left by 
Cape Barre and at the right by Cape Canon ; the battue piled high 

* Father LeClercq, who found a few of the sun worshippers left among' 
the Gaspesian Indians, says that this was the simple salutation to the rising 
sun. 



Perce Mountain 37 

with broken ice and at its end the crested cHff of the Pierced Rock. 
Bonaventure guarded the open waters, robed in her snow and 
verdure. His gaze swept to the south, over the head of Cape Blanc, 
along the distant coves of Beaufils to Cape d'Espoir, and on be- 
yond in the dimmest distance the eye could catch the faintly pen- 
ciled outline of Miscou and Shippegan, forty miles away. The won- 
drous beauty and primitive grandeur of the scene bathed in the 
effulgence of the new sun awoke a response in kind from the breast 
of this child of the soil. He turned his face inland toward the flat- 
topped mountains which sweep to their higher summits in the 
wilderness behind and roll up one beyond another until their curves 
are merged into the sky, but started with a throb and half sup- 
pressed bound as his eyes confronted, on a projecting plateau till 
now concealed in the half light by a thin spruce thicket, — a cross, 
towering high above the undergrowth. Ah, yes ! the cross ; it 
was the good missioner's symbol of life, as the sun was his. 
Had not he and his people helped to bear it up the moun- 
tain and to plant it there? It was their white brother's wish and 
ought he not — he threw a quick glance upon his followers. Their 
eyes, too, were fixed upon the cross, some with indifference, but 
here and there an arm dropping from forehead to breast had 
silently and almost surreptitiously repeated the symbol — the sign 
manual of the new religion. Turning from it, Ongwe let his gaze 
again linger over the brilliant tapestry of sea and shore and cover- 
ing his eyes with his hand raised his face once more to the dazzling 
sun, seeming to bathe himself in its warmth and glory, then took 
his way down the trail with no more concern for the white man's 
cross.* 

* * * 

The land of Perce is changing its level. I am under obligations 
to many of the older residents for information which leads to the in- 

*A cross was erected on the Table-a-rolante or Ste Anne at a very early 
date. I have noted the observation by Father Enjalran, who stopped at 
Perce on his way to Tadousac in 1675, that the cross stood then and it is 
possible that it was put there by LeClercq who arrived that year or even 
by one of his predecessors. Father Jumcau in his letter describing the 
destruction of Perce by Phips's sailors speaks of the cross on Ste Anne 
as one which he had set up. 

Father LeClercq after six years of labor among the Gaspesian Indians 
felt so depressed over the outcome of his labors for their conversion that 
he besought his superior for permission to leave the field. With the utmost 
reluctance the natives gave up tlie little that they seem to have had of their 
natural religion. 



38 Sketches of Gaspe 

ference that it is rising at the north and faUing at the south. Fifty 
or sixty years ago the water had come so high upon the beaches 
that it became necessary to abandon the drying stages nearest the 
shorehne and the pickets of these old stages have been found again 
in digging away for new in these later years, until now the 
shoremen say they could rebuild without danger on the site of the 
old stages. Traschy's reef off Cape Barre, the reefs of Mt Joli and 
the Quay or reefs of the Robin beach are all, in the judgment of 
the venerable residents, Mr Galarneau, Mr William Flynn and 
others, further above the water than a half century ago. The 
battue from Mt Joli to the Rock was formerly easily passed at 
high water, even by barges, but now only on the rarest occasions. 
Logan's journal speaks of being able to reach the Rock by the bar 
from Mt Joli only at the ebb of some spring tide. The coast thus 
was on its way down in the more than a half century back, then 
stopped and since has come the other way. The period of this 
oscillation has been of too brief duration to permit the formation of 
beaches during the depression, so that there are no raised terraces 
which indicate the present elevation. On the other hand, the 
beaches toward Cape Blanc have been cut to pieces within about 
the same period and the waves are rapidly shearing back the rock 
walls, so here at least the coast is falling. 



The Rocks and the People 

Geology and Scttloiicut — The Mines, their history — Petroleum; 
its promises and disappointments — The Snhmarine Mountains 
and the Fishing. 

One seeks in the geology of a country a key to its settlements. 
Original entry into a new country may be largely by accident, and 
is often a complete misfit between the capacity of the settler and 
the possibilities of the region, but in time the growth and business 
of the population come into direct dependence upon its geology. 
They assume an equilibrium antl in the expression or main- 
tenance of this balance lies the success of the individual. Geolog\^ 
is a hard master. If the settler does not adjust himself to it, or 
if by rea.son of an inadequate training he can not, geology will 
starve him out. If, instead of the tulip-loving, vegetable-raising, 
peltry-buying Dutchmen who settled JManhattan and spread over 
the fertile bottoms and hillsides of the Hudson and the Mohawk, a 
colony of German miners had entered New York by the same ave- 
nue, these must either have changed their occupation and become 
farmers or have left for other parts. 

The controlling impulse in all the early voyages to the New 
World was two- fold, to find a western passage to India and the 
tliscovery of gold. Gold was among the earliest quests upon the 
Gaspe coast, and though it was never found, yet the next best thing, 
silver, was, mixed with lead. Amongst the earliest records of 
Gaspe is the discovery of silver-bearing lead at Little Gaspe on 
the Forillon, and an organized effort was made from France to 
exploit it. Even the Jesuit missionaries seem to have got into it 
and I fear were " trimmed," for the " Relations '' record with some 
pathos the fact that in 1663 Father Balloquet returned from Gaspe 
not having found his mine "good." How history repeats itself! 
I suppose, perhaps, without final evidence, that this refers to 
the Little Gaspe vein, which is the largest of all that are known on 
the Forillon, and the ancient tailings of which are seen today covered 
by the refuse of later ventures, all of which have had the same 
outcome. The venerable ]\Ir Price, of Little Gaspe, has told me 
that till lately he had had in his possession the primitive tools used 
by the French in their mining operations here two hundred years 
ago. But these lead-bearing veins, cutting straight across the moun- 

[39] 



40 Sketches of Caspc 

tains along lines of slight displacement of the rock masses, are of 
frequent occurrence along the little peninsula, and there are 
" mines " at Grande Greve and St George's Cove. It is evidently of 
the Little Gaspe mine that Denys speaks with so much emphasis and 
detail: "One league further up the river [Gaspe Bay] is a cove 
where one can land. On the high ground is the place where it 
iicts been hoped to find a lead mine, and Messieurs de la Compagnie 
have paid the cost on the representations of persons who had 
brought some fragments that were veritably good, but they are only 
from some little veins that run over the rock and which the force of 
the sun has purified, for the whole mine is only antimony and that 
not very abundant. I have known of it for more than twenty 
years.* If it had been good I should not have let it be idle. I have 
found plenty of persons who were ready to undertake on shares 
what I have seen, but I was never willing, knowing well that I 
should deceive them and that is something I am incapable of doing 
unless I were myself deceived without knowing it." Most noble 
seigneur ! Les Messieurs de la Compagnie were doubtless let in for 
a cosy sum about two hundred and fifty years ago, and in these 
later years are again these " mines " being " promoted." Between 
these dates no one knows how many times these old veins have been 
rediscovered. 

Had nature been less wise Gaspe might have been a great oil 
field, with today its distant reaches dotted with derricks and a row 
)of palaces of captains of industry extending back from Gaspe 
Basin to the Mississippi.! If the hopes of fifty years were realized 
and oleaginous money had been pumped out of the earth, Gaspe 
would ere this have lost its bloom. The story of the hunt for 
petroleum in this region is, I believe, that of the most tenacious and 
costly pursuit of an ignis fatuus known in the history of oil develop- 
ment. Indeed for a half century the golden goal has seemed ever 
at hand, and today never so far away. Oil was found by the early 
geologists and known before their coming, oozing from the sand- 
stones on the south shore of Gaspe Bay, particularly near Tar Point 
and Point St Peter, where one of the anticlines emerges at the 
water's edge. 

In 1863 Logan published his final geological report on this 
country, and this was followed by a special report on the petroleum 

* That would be at least as early as 1652. 

tA little stream about thirty-five miles back from the Basin where the 
oil operations have been most actively carried on. 



Tke Rocks and the People 41 

by Hunt in 1865. This was near the period of rapid development 
of the petroleum production in Pennsylvania, and though the an- 
ticlinal theory of oil accumulation had not been formulated so early, 
yet private enterprise began the drilling for oil along the inland 
extension of these anticlines into the region about the upper reaches 
of the York river. From then till now companies have been 
organized to obtam this product and companies syndicated ; new 
companies representing other capital appeared and were syndicated. 
Many wells have been driven, some of them to the great depth of 
over three thousand feet ; refineries have been erected at enormous 
expense ; all apparatus for drilling and refining has had to be 
brought in by water from the States or Europe and hauled over 
rough roads tlirough the wilderness for twenty to thirty miles. All 
the labor and all the expense has been ever in the hope of finding 
oil. The refineries were built to refine the oil it was hoped to find, 
not oil that had been found, and new wells were sunk, not to find 
more oil, but only in the hope of finding some oil. The 
successive managers of the companies have lived in enviable 
magnificence at the Basin in the same hope of discovery. Nothing 
has seemed to me, a passing observer, so out of harmony with the 
spirit of the country as this display of prosperity with only a bubble 
behind it. Yet it has, I believe, all been fully justified. The sand- 
stone into which the wells have gone are saturated with petrpleum, 
and there must indeed be an enormous total amount of this material 
in the strata. But nature seems to have made no proper provision 
for its accumulation. Practice on the theory of storage in pools 
parallel to the anticlines, which has been so fruitful in other Appa- 
lachian oil fields, has here been without result. The folds are there 
and their troughs into which the oil might settle by gravity, but 
somehow it has got away. All external conditions for extensive 
production are absolutely favorable and attractive. The total product 
of all these years is the occasional brief gush, the little that has ac- 
cumulated in the bottom of the wells and been pumped out. I have 
been in no position to form an explanation of the real cause of 
this condition, but it is my suspicion that by cracks and joints in 
the bottom of the troughs the oil which might have accumulated 
therein has gone on further down and out of the reach of the drill. 
Gaspe as an oil field is deranged though very seductive. 

So Gaspe can not make a home for miners of any kind, for there 
are no mineral deposits of any present moment in it. Gaspe Basin, 
being a magnificent harbor, became a busy little port of passage. 



42 Sketches of Gaspc 

Its gentle eastern and southern slopes have made some small farm- 
ing possible, while its rivers have been the nurses of a lumber trade. 
But it is the submarine topography of Gaspe that fixed the 
business of its people from the davv^n of its civilized history. Its 
seas are washing the devoured continents, and their shallow 
rocky bottoms are the home of the cod. It is not in the deeper 
waters that the search for cod goes on. The fishermen of the 
Forillon do not spend much time in the waters of the Bay, where 
the shore falls away abruptly to considerable depths, but they be- 
take themselves around Shiphead and to the foot of the Bon Ami 
cliffs, where a broad sunken platform of rock is the resort of the 
fish ; or they may go as far as the American Bank with the fisher- 
men of St Peter, Malbay and Perce, but the cod from off the long 
shore stretches of vanished rocks are the best, smaller indeed, but 
quickest caught and soonest cured, before the deterioration begins 
which ensues in the long trip from the distant banks. The ocean 
through countless ages hamm.ered down the mountains of this Gas- 
perian world and brought their heads beneath its waves. Had not 
the rocky coast been thus exposed to the ceaseless play of the 
northeast storms, no suitable habitat would have been made for 
the cod. Few spots in the world are so prolific in these fish as 
this region of drowned mountains, this submerged tip of the great 
Appalachian mountain system. The ancient unceasing warfare be- 
tween sea and mountain has cut out for Gaspe its occupation for all 
time. Its history audits civilization, its stories of fortunes acquired,, 
or oftener of meagre livings wrested and wrung from the sea, have 
all their origin, like the picturesqueness of its scenery, in the geology 
of the country. " Que voulez-vous ! " exclaims the Abbe Ferland. 
" It is the land of the cod. By your eyes and by your nose, by 
your tongue and your gorge, and by your ears as well, you are soon 
convinced that in the Gaspesian Peninsula the cod forms the basis 
of aliment and amusement, of business and conversation, of regrets 
and hopes, of fortune and of life, and I venture to say, of society 
itself." 



The Early Settlements 

Tlic French Fislicniicii — Jrhaii Dciiys — Carticr ; stops at Perce; 
lands ill Gaspc Bay — Cham plain — The Recollets — Sir Wil- 
liam Alexander — Kirk and De Roquemont — The Jesuits — 
Nicholas Denys — Return of the Recollets — Father LcClercq 

— St Peter's Church at Perce — St Claire's at Donaventure 
Island — Fathers Didace, Joseph Denys and Jumeau at Perce 

— Lhiriiing of the Churches by the English — Father Jumeau's 
Letter — Hovenden Walker and Jack Hill at Gaspe — Beauhar- 
nois — American loyalists 

There is but scanty record of the beginnings of the settlements. 
The larger attairs of exploration and colonization touched these 
coasts only in passing, and they leave much to the imagination for 
what may have happened. It is quite certain, however, that be- 
fore the days of Cartier the coast had been reached by explorers. 
They kpew of the Golfo Quadrate, the square gulf that lay back of 
the Terra Nova, though it took long for the charts to separate New- 
foundland from the mainland and to locate the great water arms 
above and below, which lead back around into the Gulf. We know 
of the map said to have been made by Jehan Denys, a very familiar 
surname in the history of Gaspe, in 1506, which gives the out- 
line of the coast from Miscou to the St Lawrence with compara- 
tive accuracy, and fringes it with an array of place names which 
are certainly of very much later date. It is such a map, says 
Winsor, as would have been quite possible for an intrepid and zeal- 
ous explorer of this date to have made, but its outline is so great 
an advance over any of contemporary date as to bring even this 
part of it under suspicion. It is said that when Cartier first 
entered the Gulf, in 1534, through the lower passage, he encountered 
a Norman fisher, and it was not long after his voyages that the 
fishing was regularly established on the coast, both by the Normans 
and the Biscayans. Portuguese explorers were along here, too, 
earlier than Cartier. but it remained for this lucky Frenchman to 
give a new domain to his king. That hot day in July, 1534, whert 
he roasted in the Bay Chaleur and recorded the fact in its name, 
is the earliest definite date that has come down to us of the entry 
of the white man into Gaspesian waters. More momentous far was 
that day later in the same month when he erected a cross on the 

[43] 



44 Sketches of Gaspe 

beach near Douglastown, in Gaspe Bay, and took possession of the 
country in the name of the king. 

Coasting along the open headlands and below the Bay Chaleur 
he anchored for awhile in the channel off the Perce Rock, and then 
sailed on to the opening of Gaspe Bay, the Bale du Penouil of 
French writers of later date. We retell his story in the words of 
Hakluyt, for the Preacher's English is more picturesque than Les- 
carbot's French, from which it is derived. 

" BEing certified that there was no passage through the said Bay,* 
we hoised saile, and went from S. ^Nlartines Creeke vpon Sunday, 
being the 12. of July, to goe and discouer further beyond the said 
Bay, and went along the sea coastEastward about eighteene leagues, 
till we came to the Cape of Prato,t where we found the tide very 
great, but shallow ground, and the Sea stormie, so that we were 
constrained to draw toward shore, between the said Cape and an 
Hand lying Eastward, about a league from the said Cape, where 
we cast anker for that night. The next morning we hoised saile 
to trend the said coast about, which lyeth North Northeast. But 
there arose such stormie and raging winds against vs, that we were 
constrained to come to the place againe. from whence we were 
come: there did we stay all that day til the next that we hoised 
vp saile, and came to the middest of a riuer fiue or size leagues 
from the Cape of Prato Northward, and being ouerthwart the said 
Riuer, there arose againe a contrary winde, with great fogges and 
stormes. So that we were constrained vpon Tuesday, being the 
fourteenth of the Moneth, to enter into the riuer, and there did we 
stay till the sixteenth of the moneth looking for faire weather to 
come r)ut of it: on which day being Thursday, the winde became 
so raging that one of our ships lost an anker, and we were con- 
strained to goe vp higher into the riuer seuen or eight leagues, into 
a good harborough and ground that we with our boates found out, 
and through the euill weather, tempest, and darkenesse that was, 
wee stayed in the saide harborough till the fiue and twentieth of 
the m.oneth, not being able to put out : in the meane time wee sawe 
a great multitude of wilde men that were fishing for mackerels, 
whereof there is great store. Their boates were about 40. and the 
persons, what with men, women, and children, two hundred, which 
after they had hanted our company a while, they came very famil- 
iarly with their boats to the sides of our ships. We gaue them 
kniues, combes, beads of glasse, and other trifles of small value, for 
which they made many signes of gladnesse, lifting their hands vp 
to heauen, dancing and singing in their boates. These men may 

*' Bay of Chaleur. i Bonaventure. 

t Perce Rock. § Gaspe Bay. 



The Early Settlements 45 

very well and truely be called Wilde, because there is no poorer 
people in the world. For I thinke all that they had together, be- 
sides their boates and nets, was not worth hue souce. They goe 
altogether naked sailing their priuities, which are couered with a 
little skinne. and certaine olde skinnes that they cast vpon them. 
Neither in nature nor in language doe they any whit agree with 
them which we found first : their heads be altogether sauen, except 
one bush of haire which they suffer to grow vpon the top of their 
crowne as long as a horse taile, and then with certaine leather 
strings binde it in a knot vpon their heads. They haue no other 
dwelling but their boates, which they turne vpside downe, and 
vnder them they lay themselves all along vpon the bare ground. 
They eate their flesh almost raw, saue onely that they heat it a 
little vpon imbers of coales, so doe they their fish. \'pon Alagda- 
lens day we with our boates went to the bancks of the riuer, and 
freely went on shore among them, whereat they made many signs, 
and all their men in two or three companies began to sing and 
dance, seeming to be very glad of our comming. They had caused all 
the young women to flee into the wood, two or three excepted, that 
sta}ed with them, to ech of which we gaue a combe, and a little 
bell made of tinne, for which they were very glad, thanking our 
Captaine. rubbing his amies and breasts with their hands. When 
the men saw vs giue something vnto those that had stayed, it 
caused al the rest to come out of the wood, to the end that they 
should haue as much as the others : These women are about twenty, 
who altogether in a knot fell vpon our Captaine, touching and rub- 
bing him with their hands, according to their manner of cherish- 
ing and making much of one, who gaue to each of them a little 
Tinne Bell. ........... 

\'Pon the 25 of the moneth, wee caused a faire high Crosse to 
be made of the height of thirty foote, which was made in the 
presence of many of them, vpon the point of the entrance of the 
sayd hauen, in the middest whereof we hanged vp a Shield with 
three Floure de Luces on it, and in the top was earned in the wood 
with Anticke letters this posie, Vine le Roy de France. Then be- 
fore them all we set it vpon the sayd point. They with great heed 
beheld both the making and setting of it vp. So soone as it was 
vp, we altogether kneeled downe before them, with our hands 
toward Heauen, yeelding God thankes : and we made signes vnto 
them, shewing them the Heauens, and that all our saluation de- 
pendeth onely on him which in them dwelleth : whereat they shewed 
a great admiration, looking first one at another, and then vpon the 
Crosse. And after wee were returned to our ships, their Captaine, 
clad with an old Beares skin, with three of his sonnes, and a 
brother of his with him, came vnto vs in one of their boates, but 
they came not so neere vs as they were wont to doe: there he 
made a long Oration vnto vs, shewing vs the crosse we had set 
vp, and making a crosse with two fingers, then did he shew vs 
all the Countrev about vs, as if he would sav that all was his, and 



4^ Sketches of Gaspe 

that wee should not set vp any crosse without his leaue. His 
talke being ended, we shewed him an Axe, faining that we would 
giue it him for his skin, to which he listened, for by . little and 
little hee came neere our ships. One of our fellowes that was in 
our boate, tooke hold on theirs, and suddenly leapt into it, with 
two or three more, who enforced them to enter into our ships, 
whereat they were greatly astonished. But our Captain did straight- 
waies assure them, that they should haue no harme, nor any in- 
iurie offred them at all, and entertained them very friendly, making 
them eate and drinke. Then did we shew them with signes, that 
the crosse was but onely set vp to be as a light and leader which 
wayes to enter into the port, and that wee would shortly come 
againe, and bring good store of iron wares and other things, but 
that we would take two of his children with vs, and afterward 
"bring them to the sa3'd port againe: and so wee clothed two of 
them in shirts, and coloured coates, with red cappes, and put about 
■euery ones necke a copper chaine, whereat they were greatly con- 
tented ; then gaue they their old clothes to their fellowes that went 
tDacke againe, and we gave to each one of those three that went 
tacke, a hatchet, and som.e kniues, which made them very glad. 
After these were gone, and had told the news vnto their fellowes, 
in the after noone there came to our ships sixe boates of them, 
^vith fine or sixe men in euery one, to take their farewels of those 
two we had detained to take with vs, and brought them some fish, 
vttering many words which we did not vnderstand, making signes 
that they would not remoue the crosse we had set vp. 

Thus was the whole country, from that time to be known as 
New France, become the domain of the French King by this seizin 
on the shores of Gaspe. From Gaspe, Cartier sailed back to St 
Malo, not stopping to enter the great waterway of the St Lawrence, 
which he may well have believed to lead to Cathay. On his return 
the next year to follow up this passage to the Indies, he did not 
stop at Gaspe even long enough to disembark the two young Indian 
sons of a Gaspesian chief, whom he had taken (the English say 
kidnapped) from Sandy Beach back with him to France. In the 
century that followed, the Gaspe coast was visited by the fisher- 
men for the cod and mackerel, at first we may suppose occasionally 
by some venturer beyond the banks of Newfoundland, but by the 
iniddle of the sixteenth century probably regularly for the whole 
iishing season from May to November. They came from Nor- 
mandy and St "Malo, Bordogne and many places along the Bay of 
Biscay, La Rochelle, Olonne and the Isle d'Yeu. but theyVere not 
settlers on the coast. We can not tell the slender doings that were 
slowly making during all this time toward permanent occupation. 



The Early Settlements 47 

but we may believe that the beaches were yearly dotted with the 
curing-houses and covered with the stages, flakes and the round 
mows of dried fish thatched with birch-bark held down by large 
stones as they were in the days of Nicholas Denys and as they are 
today. 

Up to the time of Champlain's voyage along the coast in 1603 
and later, there was nothing to invite the traveler for a longer stay 
than shelter at Gaspe harbor or wood and water at Perce. 

But if the character of the country failed to offer inducement to 
permanent settlement to farmer or fisherman, the souls of the 
natives did, and as early as 1610 it was proposed to the Jesuit 
superiors to establish colonies for the purpose of disseminating the 
gospel. Champlain, however, had a fondness for the Recollets ; 
there was a Franciscan monastery in his home town of Brouage, 
and so the missions in New France were begun by the four whom 
he brought out from Brouage in 161 5. Unmoved by motives of 
material gain, but in zealous obedience to the divine command, 
Euntcs ergo doc etc omnes gcntes, these knights of the faith were 
soon to break ground in this wilderness of Gaspe. 

Who it was and at what spot he began his labors our records do 
not show, but the Jesuit Relations say that the date was 1619, and 
as Perce was the best known station on the coast, where most of 
the vessels from France dropped anchor on their way in and out, 
where fresh water and fuel could be had in abundance and the 
French fishermen resorted in greatest numbers, it seems likely that 
here the work commenced. 

Trouble was now brewing between the two governments which 
claimed supremacy over all this country. The English were settling 
in Cape Breton. Sir William Alexander, who had received from 
James I patents to all the territory as far as Cape Gaspe, was en- 
deavoring to spread the settlements further northward, and was 
scattering new place names along the coast. With the modesty of 
a Joshua he called all this country from Acadia to the St Lawrence, 
New Alexandria. But New Alexandria was not to be of long dura- 
tion, nor was the Recollet mission in Gaspe, for the war between 
the French and English soon came on and the fathers abandoned 
their work in 1624. It was in 1628 that ^Admiral Kirk of the Eng- 
lish fleet overhauled the French commander De Roquemont in 
Gaspe Bay, where he had taken harbor, and fought him to his 
complete finish, burning his vessels laden with supplies for the 
forces at Quebec and capturing an enormous booty. The Dieppois 



48 Sketches of Gasps 

Englishman tarried awhile in Gaspe Basin, and Faucher says that 
while there he burned a cache of grain belonging to the Jesuits, 
though he had promised in the capitulation not to disturb the re- 
ligious. It is evident that the Recollets are meant, for several 
Recollet fathers were among the captives, and it is an interesting; 
reference to their early presence in the Basin. 

After the recovery of Canada from the English in 1632, Riche- 
lieu offered the Canadian missions to the Capuchins, but, declined 
by them, these were tendered to the Jesuits, and it was in that year 
on Trinity Sunday that Father Lejeune arrived in " Gaspay," and 
he speaks of the contentment with which he entered the new- 
country after his long voyage. Here he found fishing vessels from 
Honfleur and Biscay and celebrated mass in their cabins. Father 
Lejeune went on to Tadousac, but he seems to have been stationed 
on the Gaspe coast, for in 1634 he says the winter was so cold that 
the Indians killed and ate a young boy whom the Basques had left 
to learn the language, amd ag-ain in 1635 speaks of the great abund- 
ance of cod in " our great river at Gaspe." It was in 1636 that 
Nicholas Denys, eventually to become the Lieutenant Governor- 
General of the King over all the country between Cape Canso 
and Cape Rosier, began his labors for the development of the 
coast and its opening to settlement. His long activity on the coast 
for more than forty years seems to have been attended with an open 
want of sympathy from those whose co-operation he was entitled to- 
expect and with severe losses from the adventures in the fishing. 
It is difficult to find evidence that any permanent settlement had 
been made by the French at any Gaspe point up to this date. Cham- 
plain's great map of his explorations in New France, dated 1632, 
indicated all French settlements of the country with a flag, but there 
is no flag on all Gaspe. And of the events along the coast all dur- 
ing the supremacy of Denys we know little, though he himself 
wrote most interestingly of its natural history, its fishing and but 
only incidentally of the procession of happenings during his time. 

Nicholas Denys came to Canada with the Commander Razilly 
soon after the treaty of 1632 and he seems to have settled on the 
coast of Acadia about 1636. His residence was frequently changed^ 
but even in his later years, when he had become concerned with 
the Perce fishing, it does not appear that he settled in Gaspe. With 
Nicholas came his brother Denys de Vitre. Nicholas established a 
fishing station at Rossignol which he exploited in partnership with 
Razilly, and after the death of the latter he was appointed by the 



The Early Sittlcmciits 49 

Compagnie du Nouvelle France " Gouverneur en toute retendue 
de la grande baic Saint-Laurent et iles adjacentcs a commencer 
depuis le cap de Canseau jusqu' au Cap des Rosiers." He then 
established fishing stations at Chedebucto (Guybo rough) and at 
St Pierre in Breton. His commission gave him trouble, however, 
for Le Borgne. a Rochelle merchant, had obtained from the French 
Parliament a concession of the same territory, from which he pro- 
ceeded to drive Denys out. Sixty of Le Borgne's men attacked 
Denys at his house on Cape Breton, carried off his workmen, and 
pillaged his vessel, which was loaded with merchandise. Denys 
himself they carried to Port Royal and put in irons. As soon 
as he was released he made for France, and returned in 1654 to 
take possession of his posts, fortified with a commission from the 
King. Finally, to enable him to pay the large debt he had con- 
tracted through the failure of his enterprises in the fishing, the 
Government reassumed or resold his patent to the vast territory he 
controlled and gave to his son, Richard Denys de Fronsac, the lands 
on Miramichi Bay and River. Richard afterward obtained the con- 
cession of Perce and adjoining territory. 

During all the years from 1632 the Jesuits had taken possession 
of the missions, but we catch only occasional glimpses of their 
activities. We know that Father Andre Richard was on the coast 
at Perce and nearby in 1661, and that he followed in this field 
Father IMartin Lyonne. Denys says that there were twelve hundred 
French fishing vessels along this coast and in Newfoundland in 
1650. It was about 1670 that the Government consented to the 
return of the Recollets. Richard Denys invited their presence at 
Perce, and Fathers Hilarion Guesnin and Exuperius de Thune were 
sent here by their superior. Whether they came together or in suc- 
cession, they were the first to take up the work abandoned by the 
Recollets fifty years before. No progress had been made in the 
settlement of the country ; it was still a wilderness, and the 
mission was to the four or five hundred Gaspesian Indians and 
nearly the same number of French fishermen. Thus it was when 
Chrestien LeClercq arrived at Perce, on th'e 27th of October, 1675, ' 
to take the mission. LeClercq repaired at once to the home of 
Pierre Denys, on Gaspe Bay, and being wholly at loss for means 
of communication with the Indians, set himself to acquire their 
language, spending his first winter with them in the camps at the 
head waters of the rivers. It is to him that we owe the interesting 
Nouvelle Relation de La Gaspesie (1691), which has depicted with 

4 



50 Sketches of Gaspe 

vividness and force the labors, discouragements and slender results 
■of his mission and the nature, habits and customs of his Indians, 
an account which closes with the first period of his labors. Of 
less concern is his Premier Etahlissemetvt du Foy, which is said to 
be a mutilated work, suffering from the keen jealousies between 
the two sects, Recollets and Jesuits, at that day in the field. 

The Perce mission house was founded in 1682, according to the 
contemporary account given by Father LeTac. LeClercq remained 
five years in spite of discouragements in the conversion of the 
natives, which depressed him to such a degree that he begged his 
superior to relieve him of his charge. In his writings he speaks 
of the church at Perce, but it seems that this structure which was 
to pass under the vocable " St Peter's " was not erected till 1685. 
It was built by Brother Didace, was fifty feet long and contained 
rooms for the religious. We may believe that the hospice at Perce 
and the church of St Claire on Bonaventure were built at the same 
time and by the same hands. Father Joseph Denys was then mis- 
sionary at Perce. He was succeeded by Father Jumeau, who had 
been at the mission during LeClercq's settlement; and it was 
Jumeau who witnessed the pillage and burning of all the churches 
by the " Boston corsairs " and " Dieppe renegades " of Sir William 
Phips's naval forces in 1690. One can conceive of LeClercq's 
horror and despair at receiving from his former coworker the 
account of the appalling doings at the little mission. 

After the Provincial congresses at Albany and New York early 
in 1690, which concluded the purpose on the part of the .Colonies 
to take offensive measures against New France, Sir William Phips 
was, as early as June, on his expedition from Boston against 
Quebec. He captured Port Royal, as all the world knows, and 
proceeded with his thirty- four vessels up through the Gulf and' on 
to Quebec. Here he found himself confronted by an impregnable 
fortress, and his imperious demand for surrender was greeted with 
derision. Without a gun fired he turned about and sailed for home, 
and his " corsairs " seem to have found an opportunity to discharge 
themselves of their pent-up zeal at the little mission of Perce. It 
was a shameless, brutal outburst of ruffianism which we may believe 
was perpetrated by stragglers from the fleet without the com- 
mander's orders or knowledge. Father Jumeau, escaping from the 
devastation and wreck to the Isle D'Yeu in Biscay, wrote to his 
coworker as follows : 



The Early Settlements 51 

My Reverend Father : 

I pass in silence the distressing details of the shipwreck that 
we suffered last year, during a terrible night, the twenty-third of 
November, off Cap Des Rosiers, fifteen leagues from the Isle 
Percee ; and the troubles we have endured this year, from having 
been seized by a frigate of Flessingue, fifty leagues from Rochelle; 
for I wish to confide to you the one sorrow which fills my whole 
heart at present, and which, I am certain, will afffict you no less 
than it does me, since I have been a witness of the pains you 
have taken in establishing our mission in the Isle Percee, and 
of the zeal with which you have labored for the glory of God and 
the salvation of souls. It seems as though it pleased Our Lord 
to preserve my life in the shipwreck only that I might be a 
witness also of the total ruin and utter desolation of this place, in 
order to relate it to you, who will make known to all the world to 
what excess of impiety and hatred heresy can reach when once 
it finds itself able by the help of its adherents to undertake and 
carry out its plans. Briefly to tell you : in the early part of last 
August two English frigates appeared, flying the French flag, in 
the roadstead of the Isle of Bonaventure. and by this stratagem they 
easily seized five fishing vessels whose captains and crews were 
at the time wholly occupied with fishing, and were all forced 
to fly to Quebec, not being in a condition to defend them- 
selves nor contend with so many nations leagued against them. 
Then these sworn enemies of the State and of Religion, having 
attempted to land, and succeeding according to their desires, so- 
journed there eight whole days, and committed an hundred impious 
acts, with all the disorders imaginable. Among other things, they 
pillaged, ravaged and burned the houses of the inhabitants, who 
number at least eight or ten families, and who, for the most part, 
had alraady fled into the woods with precipitation, to avoid the 
presence and the cruelty of those pitiless Heretics, who made 
horrible carnage, fire and blood everywhere. I shiver with horror 
at the simple remembrance of the impieties and sacrileges that these 
wretches committed in our church, which they used as a guard- 
house and a place of debauch ; animated by the same spirit as the 
Iconoclasts, they broke and strewed under foot our images, 
against which they fulminated a thousand imprecations, with in- 
vectives and insults as though they had been living creatures. The 
pictures of the Holy Virgin and of Saint Peter were not exempt 
from their fury and violence ; for both were riddled with more than 
a hundred and fifty shots which these wretched men discharged, 
and with each shot they pronounced with mockery and derision 
these words of the litanies: 

Saiieta Maria, ora pro nobis; 
Sancte Pctre, ora pro nobis. 

Not a cross escaped their fury, with the exception of the one 
that I formerly planted on the Table-a-Rolland, which by reason 



52 Sketches of Gaspe 

of being on a mountain of too difficult access, stands at present all 
alone, the sacred monument of our Christianity. The sacrileges of 
Balthazar, who in olden times in the midst of a feast profaned 
the sacred vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem, making his covirte- 
sans and concubines drink from them, were the same that these 
Heretics committed, who amidst their horrible debauches day and 
night, drank from our chalices bumpers to the health of the Prince 
of Orange, whom they blessed, hurling on the contrary a thousand 
imprecations against their legitimate King. The commander, in 
order to be as distinguished by his impiety as he was by his position^ 
dressed himself in the handsomest of our chasubles, and by an os- 
tentation as vain -as it was ridiculous, promenaded on the beach, 
with the silver monstrance fastened on his cap, and obliged his com- 
panions, using a thousand dissolute words, to pay him the same 
honors and reverences that the Catholics render in the most solemn 
processions to the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. At last 
they closed all these impieties with a ceremony as extraordinary 
in form as it was extravagant and abominable in all its circum- 
stances. They took the crowns of the Holy Sacrament"" and of 
the Holy Virgin, and placed them on the head of a sheep ; they 
tied the animal's feet, and having laid it on the consecrated Stone 
of the High Altar, they killed it, sacrificed it in derision of the 
Sacrifice of the Holy Mass, as a thanksgiving to God, (so they 
said) for the first victories they had gained, over the Papists of 
New France. This being finished they set fire to the four corners- 
of the church, which was quickly reduced to ashes. So also did 
they treat that of our Mission in the Isle of Bonaventure, doomed 
to a like destiny, after they had broken the images and cut all the 
ornaments with great sabre-thrusts. You can well judge by the 
sorrow you feel at the simple recital that T make you of these dis- 
asters how deeply I was moved, when, on the very spot where had 
been the High Altar of our church, I found still there the carcass 
of the sheep which had served as the victim of that abominable 
sacrifice of those impious men. Outraged and penetrated with 
grief thus to see all the crosses of this Mission hacked into pieces- 
or overthrown, I at once formed the resolution to re-establish the 
principal ones; this I succeeded in doing with the kind help of 
the inhabitants, who applied themselves to this holy work with a. 
piety and devotion which exceeded even the fury and rage that 
the Heretics had displayed in destroying them. But alas ! my dear 
Father, I have great cause to believe, and I fear indeed, that they 
will sufifer again the fatal results of a second attack from these 
sworn enemies of our holy Religion, because two days after the erec- 
tion of these Crosses, that is to say on the tenth of September, 
we were obliged to quickly cut our cables and spread sail at the 
sight of seven hostile ships, Avhich gave chase to us in a strange 
manner, but from which we happily at last escaped by favor of the 
night, during which we beheld with grief all the habitations of 
the Little River [Gaspe Bay] on fire. God knows in what per- 



The Early Settlements 53 

plexity and inquietude we were then what to do, having no port 
sail which we needed to crowd sail, so as to get more quickly to a 
distance from the Isle Percee, and besides that, in want of bread, 
of fresh water, in a word of everything that is needed for so long 
and difficult a voyage as is that from Canada to France. But at 
last Our Lord in his mercy delivered us out of all these dangers, 
and particularly from the privateer of Flessingue, who, having 
seized our vessel, stripped us of everything, and after having de- 
tained us only four or five hours on board his ship, sent us back 
•on our vessel after many menaces and much ill-treatment ; and 
two days later, being again pursued by another vessel, we dis- 
covered joyfully the Isle Dieu [D'Yeu], where we have just cast 
anchor in the roadstead, and from which place 1 write you this 
letter, hoping to describe to you more fully the misfortunes of our 
Mission of the Isle Percee. Meanwhile remember me in your Holy 
Sacrifices, and believe me for all eternity yours. 

It was in 171 1 that Hovenden Walker and Jack Plill led their 
armada from Boston out against Quebec, and it was in Gaspe Bay 
they came to anchor while feeling their way pilotless through the 
Gulf. It was on the Egg Island that the storms of these rough 
waters tossed them with fearful loss of life, making an end of all 
their foolish ambitions. One at least of their fleet seems to have 
been wrecked on Cape d'Espoir. 

Time runs rapidly on this coast without other record than the 
growth of the fisheries. The crisis between the French and English 
claims was approaching, and, foreseeing it, Beauharnois, the Gov- 
ernor-General, proposed to the Ministry in 1745 to efifect an 
establishment at Gaspe while a few years later (1756) Montcalm 
complained that the English had already entrenched themselves 
there and urged that a French fleet be sent to drive them out. 
Indeed the English had already a fort on the spot, and the French 
were too late. 

After the subversion of the French rule, settlement went on 
more rapidly. Nicholas Cox, Lieutenant-Governor of Gaspe, re- 
ported in 1777 that there were one hundred and seventy- four per- 
sons living at Gaspe. Upon the accomplishment of the American 
Revolution loyalist families from the States sought new homes in 
this country, and M. Rouillard, in a pamphlet issued by the Com- 
missioner of Colonization,* states that General Haldimand detailed 
Capt. Justus Sherwood to explore the Bay Chaleur and the region 
northward and select the most suitable locations for settlement. 



* La Colonization dans les Comtes de Temiscouata, Rimouski, Matane, 
Bonaventure, Gaspe, 1899. 



54 Sketches of Gaspc 

This was in 1783, and as a result of the exploration two hundred 
and fifty to three hundred loyalist families located, part at Doug- 
lastown, on Gaspe Bay, and the rest at New Carlisle and New 
Richmond, in Bonaventure County. 

These dates, however, bring us far this side of our topic and of 
the organization of the fishing on the coast by Charles Robin, the 
most pregnant event in its history, and this we mean to speak of 
in the following chapter. 



Historical Sketch of the Cod-Fisheries of Gaspe 

Procedure in the time of Nicholas Denys — Same methods follozved 
today — Present mode of packing for shipment — The arrival 
of Charles Robin — Early procedure of the Robin Establish- 
ment — Robin's letters — Capture of the "Bee" and "Hope'' 
— Business abandoned on account of American Revolution — 
Criticisms of the Robin administration — Incoming of the 
Loyalists settlers — Later Ushijig establishments 

To Gaspe the cod-fishing has been of much more moment than to 
the other cod-producing regions of the world. Newfoundland and 
Norway have their timber, their mines, their agriculture, but none 
of these has many possibilities for Gaspe, save perhaps the timber 
of its inland wilderness. The cod ever has been the chief commer- 
cial asset of the country, the largest factor in its settlement and 
development, and it is likely to continue so to be. The venturesome 
Norman fishermen found their way hither very early, but for more 
than one hundred years after the coming of Cartier, indeed up to 
the arrival of the Recollets at Perce, the fishing was carried 
on without permanent settlement on the coast. Writing in 1672 
Nicholas Denys says : '' Those who follow the fishing are mostly 
Normans from Honfleur, Dieppe and other small harbors of that 
country, some from Boulogne and Calais, Brittany, Olonne and all the 
country of Aulnais. The Basques," he adds, "are the most skilful; 
after them the Rochelle men and those from the neighboring islands, 
then the Bourdelois and Bretons." Each year these fishing crews 
made their way across the Atlantic, anchored in the bays and coves, 
made their catch, cured it ashore and returned to France with their 
cargo. Sometimes the trip across was made even twice a year, 
once just after the early surtimer fishing and again after the autumn 
return of the fish, when all sailed back to be in time for the Lenten 
market. Even during these years while Denys watched and shared 
in the fishing on the coast, from 1633 to 1688, and while it was 
carried on from across the sea, the coast was a scene of great 
activity from June to December and brought some hundreds of 
vessels from the other side. The picture which Denys has given of 
the whole procedure of the fishing business in chapter after chapter 
of his " Natural History " of 1672-, presents the minutest detail and 
particular of these operations as then carried out from the em- 

[55] 



56 Sketches of Gaspe 

barkation on the French coast till anchor was again dropped in the 
home ports. With the beginning of permanent settlement by the 
fishing folk the methods of the business did not materially alter, as 
everything still depended on the shipmasters who came out from 
France. In the 1700's the settlements were gradually attained, 
bringing with them the storing of the fish ashore till convenient 
transportation could be had and Denys's dream of a successful 
pesehe sedentaire was realized. An annotated translation of 
Denys's work by Professor W. F. Ganong has recently been pub- 
lished by the Champlain Society. 

We have very slender records of this business on the coast till 
the time of the coming of the organizer and syndicator of the 
Gaspe fishing, Charles Robin, in 1766. A practical fishing master 
of Gaspe today, trained by long experience in the Robin establish- 
ment, upon reading Denys's account, assures me that, mutatis 
mutandis, that is, due allowance being made for the fact that the 
fishing fleet is now Canadian and not French, the methods and 
processes in vogue now are essentially those of two hundred 
years ago and that time has found little to add to the efficiency of 
the procedure. 

It was the business of the beach master then .as now to keep 
the beaches well covered with rounded stones and pebbles, as free 
from sand as possible, and to see that the boys pulled out all weeds 
and removed all debris. With the same shaped hooks and with 
lines rigged as now, and with the same bait, the cod was taken, 
and pitched from the shallops with the same shaped pew. At 
the splitting table built as today were the trancheur, decoleur and 
picqueur, supplied with fish from the same shaped barrow by the 
same shaped boy. The splitters with knives of the ancient pattern 
today still grasp the fish by the " ears " for decapitation, with one 
time-honored movement disembowel it and push the livers into the 
vat through a hole in the splitting table and with another cut out 
the backbone. The liver vat still has its wicker for the oil to drain 
through, and still gives off, as the livers stew in the sun, an incense 
too rank to rise heavenward, the special parfumerie of the devil, 
equaled only by the aroma rising from the cod heads festering in 
the sun's heat on the plowed fields.* 

* Mr. Dolbel of the Fruing Co. at Grande Greve tells me that tliis 
appalling and stupefying stench is actually agreeable to the fishermen and 
that when action has been taken by the local authorities toward abating the 
nuisance, the fishermen have been so incensed over the matter as to compel 
the abeyance of such attempts. 



Historical Sketch of the Cod-Fisheries of Gaspe 57 

It is going on three centuries since tlie splitters at their table 
stood in half-barrels with their aprons running down outside. In 
describing the work at the splitting table Denys says amongst other 
details : 

The decoleur " pushes the cod on to the dresser, who takes it 
by the ear with a mitten that he wears on his left hand, otherwise 
he could not hold it firmly, places the back against a wooden rod 
the length of the cod, two fingers thick and nailed opposite to him 
on the bench to hold the fish steady and prevent it from sliding in 
its fat during the operation." The decoleur still wears the mitten 
and the table still has the wooden rod. 

As then so now the fish are laid head to tail and salted, are 
arranged on the flakes, grouped en moiiton at night and in pile on 
the beach. The spruce flakes on a welll-constructed beach are 
now as they were then, though the boughs with which they were 
overlain are now being driven out by wire netting;* and the mow- 
shaped piles on the beach are sometimes thatched with gaff cod 
laid tail upward, but more often with birch rinds, or in heavy 
weather with sail cloth, as in the old days. 

In fact, throughout Denys's description the procedure is that still 
regarded as essential to making good fish. The gentlemen I have 
referred to find a slight difference in the mode of drying the fish 
then and now, and suspect that the old way may be the best. Now 
the fish are spread on the flakes flesh up and toward evening turned 
skin up for the night. Then they were laid skin up first, turned 
flesh up later in the day and then again turned skin up for the 
night. The old process involved another turning, but gave the skin 
a chance to dry first, and the back must be thoroughly dried in all 
well-cured cod. 

The changed conditions of the coast today of course have made 
the final stages in the packing for shipment wholly different than 
formerly. Now the fish are packed in tubs and drums containing 
one Portuguese quintal of one hundred and twenty-eight pounds 
for the Brazil markets, in casks of four hundred and forty-eight 



* The introduction of wire netting is regarded a decided advance in the 
curing of the fish as it is less liable to harbor the multitude of flies which are 
attracted by the fish during the first daj-s they are on the flakes as well 
as in damp weather. 



58 Sketches of Gaspe 

pounds for the Mediterranean and West Indies.* The large and 
gair' fish generally go in bulk to Portugal. Not every economy is 
employed in utilizing all parts of the fish. Should a Chicago pack- 
ing house allow so much of any of its meat animals to go to waste 
as the fisherman does of his cod a considerable margin of profit 
would be sheared away. The cod's head, with its sharp, hard 
enamel teeth and keen-edged bones and delicate flesh, is thrown 
away, the "backbone and sounds with their possibilities for glue and 
fertilizer are rejected, and the livers refined only to a very crude oil 
for leather dressing. Several thousand tons of rejectamenta are 
annually left to waste their sweetness on the Gaspe air. 

It was not until after the fall of Quebec that capitalists from the 
Channel Islands became interested in this Gaspe fishing, and among 
the first of these were members of the Robin family of Jersey. The 
Robins were established on Bay Chaleur in 1764, and probably on 
Cape Breton as early, doing business in the latter place under the 
firm, name of Philip Robin & Co., and in the former at Paspebiac, as 
Charles Robin & Co., Philip and Charles being brothers. 

When Charles Robin came to Gaspe the fishing was scattered in 
small establishments and without organization. Though his purpose 
was to seek locations for new establishments on the capital he rep- 
resented, yet the outcome was the development of a concern with 
interests so wide upon the coast and influences so commanding 
upon the greater part of the fishing industry as to practically con- 
solidate and control the entire business without serious competition 
for nearly a century and to set the pace for all future undertakings 
.along this line. The firm name has changed with time, but till 1886 
it was Charles Robin & Co., then took the form C. Robin & Co., 
Ltd. A few years later Collas & Co. amalgamated with the old 
firm, and the title became The Charles Robin-Collas Co., Ltd. Up 
to this time the capital of the business was all in Jersey, and the 
entire transaction of the fishing was carried out in accordance with 
orders from across the sea. In 1904 Collas & Whitman of Halifax 
entered the company, and the business is now the C. Robin-Collas 
Co., Ltd., with headquarters at Halifax. Today with the main 

*Mr. Dolbel remarks that the four hundred and forty-eight pound cask is a 
quite recent innovation and being shipped by a steamer puts the fish on the 
market much earHer in the season than was usual by the old system of 
shipping in bulk by small sailing vessels carrying from one thousand eight 
hundred to two thousand five hundred quintals, sailing late in September and 
not often arriving till November. 



Historical Skitch of the Cod-Fisheries of Gaspc 59 

establishment at the historic location, Paspebiac, the company con- 
trols twenty-eight fishing stations all along the shores of Gaspe 
from Bay Chaleiir to well up the mouth of the St Lawrence and 
on the north shore of the river and the Labrador. 

When Robin arrived in Gaspe he found an establishment at Bona- 
venture controlled by William Smith and with him entered into 
business relations. Smith gaining control of the stations up the Bay 
and Robin devoting his attention to accjuiring or erecting new sta- 
tions on the coast from Paspebiac down. Smith and Robin had a 
good many disagreements and finally ceased to co-operate. Jvobin's 
enterprises were proving fortunate when the American war broke 
out and his serious troubles began. 

It has been my very good fortune through the favor of the 
General ^lanager of the Robin establishments and directly with the 
aid of Richardson Tardif. Esq., of Perce, to gain access to extracts 
from the letterbooks of Charles Robin kept among the records of 
the Paspebiac house. The letters of the earliest years of the estab- 
lishment seem to have been lost and the first in the book is dated 
June 5, 1777, just at the commencement of his troubles with the 
An^ericans. Writing this month to his brother John at Neirechak 
he congratulates him on his narrow escape from capture and his 
safe arrival. They had apparently both started together on the 
return from one of many trips to Jersey, each in his own vessel 
and the fleet accompanied by. a convoy, but they were overhauled 
by an American freebooter " the same that ruined us last year in 
Neirechak," and one of the vessels was captured. The sailing- 
masters had been wise enough to take out French papers at Jersey 
and with the help of the French flag completed their disguise and 
got clear, though his brother was separated from the rest of the 
fleet during the attack. Just about a year after, June 30, 1778, he 
writes to his brother Philip at Jersey an account of the cajiture of 
his vessels, the " Bee" and "Hope," at the station at Paspebiac. 

" On the nth instant at about 11 o'clock at night, two American 
privateers schooners of 45 tons, 2 carriage guns, 12 swivels and 
forty-five men each put alongside of the " Bee " & " Hope " and 
boarded them, there were but 3 men on board each, being all em- 
ployed in the fishery and not expecting a visit from them so early, 
as otherwise the " Bee " could have kept them oflf had all the people 
been on board, she being the only vessel arrived for sometime was 
unloaded in a week which obliged us to put her guns in her hole 
as she would not bear them on deck in so wild a Road without 
ballast & it could not be the case without we had determined to 
make no fishing ourselves, an object of Qtls. 2000 which I thought 



6o Sketches of Gaspe 

was worth our attention. The " Hope '' had Qtls. 1400 fish on 
board, was to take Qtls. 200 more the next day & sail for Lisbon 
in a few days. They (the Privateers) sent her off the 13th and 
began to take everything out of the stores and ship them on board 
the "Bee." She was rigged & was going off the 15th; after which 
departure the Americans came to our Habitation to take me away,. 
but I had fled to the woods the night before mistrusting it — how- 
ever that morning three ships appearing, viz; His Majesty's ships 
" Hunter " and " Viper," and Mr. Smith's ship " Bonaventure ' — 
the latter was here the first and fired at them, on their approach the 
Americans took in their Privateer all the dry goods they could 
come at and went away. I had concealed a little quantity (a third 
of the goods) which they could not come at — they had found the 
best part of our furs which they put on board, but having coiled 
the cable on them were obliged to leave them behind as w.ell as the 
powder and ammunition, which I did not expect, neither that they 
would leave the ship without setting her on fire — both Privateers 
having been taken since at Restigouche so that I have recovered my 
goods to a trifle which they bartered with the Indians for canoes 
for their escape. I am to pay yi salvage on the " Bee." The 
"' Hunter " and " Viper " were laying in Gaspe but being informed 
by Captain Fainton of Perce of the Privateer being here they set 
out — however they were too late to retake the " Hope." Capt. 
John Boyle of H. M. S. " Hunter " has promised to leave one of his 
ships in the Bay for our protection. The " Bee " is in ballast with 
ten men constantly on board in the day time who watch at night 
when there are thirty men on board and the shore gang is ready 
to join them in case of alarm. 

I keep four shallops fishing & the Perce Gang, but they don't 
absent themselves at night, the crew sleeping on board." 

Nervousness and anxiety are written large all through this very 
disconnected letter, but the times had indeed become nerve-wracking 
for one whose argosies were all on this coast. Very soon again he 
writes of more trouble: 

July 25, 1778, "Neptune left for Miscou to collect fish — was 
taken the next day by Am. Privateer of 2 guns & 26 swivels with 
Qtls. 1050 fish which they put in their Privateer and sank the 
shallop • — • they also took another shallop belonging to the place, 
which shallop has since been retaken by H. M. ship " St. Peter", 
the Privateer escaped. Altho there are armed ships of war sta- 
tioned in the Gulf, these small Privateers find means to be along 
the shore. 

" The " Bee " is still fully manned & you may be persuaded we 
shall do our utmost to defend ourselves and property — these are 
very embarrassing times and heavy charges upon my weary 
shoulders, this is no more a place for an Englishman, the in- 
habitants being all inclined toward the Americans. 



Historical Sketch of the Cod-Fislicrics of Gaspe 6i 

" Vessels to call at Falmouth for orders & how to proceed in 
case Jersey should be taken." [War with France was then immi- 
nent.] 

Before the season was over his apprehensions got the best of 
Robin and he returned to Jersey where he remained till the summer 
of 1783. In April of this year he gives a letter of instructions to 
Capt. George Xeil of the brig " Paix " for his guidance on arrival 
at Paspebiac, telling him among other things to " plant potatoes 
and May peas," and he himself reached Paspebiac June 14th. Soon 
after he writes that " war has impoverished this coast amazingly " 
and complains that the Restigouche savages had broken into his 
store at Trocadiguess (Carleton) and had stolen all they could 
take off. 

Whatever may have been the methods adopted by Robin in his 
previous business in dealing with his employees, this year 1783, 
Avith the renewal of his enterprises on the coast, he introduced the 
*' truck-system " then in vogue in Newfoundland. This was pay- 
ment to the fishermen for fish taken, half in cash and half in goods 
from the company's stores. Doubtless this practice and its abuse 
laid the foundation for the severe aspersions that have at times 
been made upon the relations of the employers to the fishermen, 
for the cash must of necessity in large part be spent in the company 
store, thus the company's talent was returned to it with usiiry. The 
credit for goods led to advances to the men which in many cases 
made them almost serfs to the establishment, though by this prac- 
tice of advances the company was certainly the loser. For ninety- 
nine years this system was maintained in the Robin establishments 
and still later in some of the other concerns. 

, Charles Robin retired from the fishing in 1802 a very wealthy 
man. When the Abbe Ferland was writing in 1836 he made some 
comments on the mode of administration of the Robin business 
which had then become the historic procedure. Charles Robin was 
then dead and the heads of the house were his nephews. I pre- 
sume Ferland's account a faithful as it certainly is an interesting 
picture of the conduct of the business. 

" Neither of the owners," he says. " resides on the properti^.. 
The head of it [Philip Robin] travels in France and Italy; thence 
by letters communicates his plans and orders which are carried 
into effect by the Jersey resident [Jacques Robin]. In Gaspe the 
business is conducted by six commissioners placed two by two 
[presumably at the three large establishments, Paspebiac. Grand 



62 Sketches of Gaspe 

River and Perce] . These employes must be unmarried men, or if 
married they are not allowed to have their wives with them. A'ery 
strict regulations govern them, entering into the minutest details as 
to their conduct, even specifying what dishes are to be served each 
day at their table. If these rules were faithfully carried out their 
cuisine would not be very costly. Although the emoluments of the 
commissioners are not great, nevertheless no master was ever better 
served than are the MM. Robin. 

" Chosen at about the age of fourteen years and trained for some 
time by the heads of the concern, these employes are then placed 
in the establishments of Gaspe where the interests of the company 
seem to become identified with their own. Every second year one 
of the commissioners of each warehouse spends the winter in Jersey 
in order to give an account of the state of affairs. 

" One of the most important principles of the MM. Robin is to 
allow no innovations. Many incidents are recorded relating to 
their attachment to the established order ; I will cite only one. 
Their coasting vessels must always terminate in a long narrow 
stern. A few years ago their head carpenter in making a brig for 
the coast service thought desirable to give it a square stern, since 
the wood he was using necessitated that shape. Some months after- 
ward he received orders to alter it and made it over again with 
the elongated stern. To this order was added a solemn injunction 
always to maintain the ancient practise." 

The strictures made by the Abbe on the effect of the Robin fish- 
ing trust upon the settlements and their people may present a fair 
picture of the conditions seventy years ago and in the light of the 
present it is interesting to read them. 

" The inhabitants of Paspebiac are completely dependent on the 
house of Robin. When the government decided to make grants of 
land to the people, ]M. Charles Robin, who held absolute authority 
here, persuaded the fishermen that it would be more to their ad- 
vantage to have each but one piece of ten acres, for the reason 
that cultivation on a larger scale would take their time from the • 
fisheries. They allowed themselves to be so persuaded and now 
repent of their folly. These small pieces of land furnish but a 
little amount of pasture, and the owners of them are obliged to 
buy everything at the stores of the company, who sell to them on 
credit and to whom they are always in debt. 

" When they endeavor to shake off their bondage and carry their 
fish to other markets, they are threatened with a summons for debt 
before the tribunals of which they have a great dread. They are 
forced to submit to the yoke and expiate their effort at emancipa- 
tion by a long penance. 

" The regulations imposed on the agents forbid them to advance 
anything to the fishermen before a certain set time ; the stores may 
be full of provisions, but not a biscuit can be given out before the 



Historical Skitch of the Cod-fishcrics of Gaspe 65 

hour set. As the fishermen are only paid in goods they can not 
lay by anything for the future ; when they have been furnished with 
whatever is necessary, their accounts are balanced by objects of 
luxury. So it comes about that the girls here wear more finery than 
the grand people of the faubourgs of Quebec. 

" Schools are proscribed. ' There is no need of instruction for 
them,' wrote AI. Philip Robin to his commissioners. ' If they were 
educated, would they be better fishermen?' * * * Xhe fisher- 
man is always in debt to the proprietors, always at their mercy, 
liable whenever his debts have got to the jxjint where they can not 
be paid by the fisheries to be put on lx)ard any of the ships of the 
company to make a voyage to Europe as a sailor. So frequently 
one finds fishermen who have made a voyage to Jersey, Lisbon, 
Cadiz, ]\Iessina, Palermo." 

The commentary of the Abbe Ferland probably goes farther than 
the situation really justified. Orders from the Jersey headquarters 
were indeed strict, even to a much later day than his. Mr. Tardif 
says that he has heard the old hands whose recollection runs back to 
the time of Ferland's writing say that the food supplied to the cook 
houses was good and the orders for general supplies called for salt 
beef, pork, biscuit, flour and chocolate, rum and tea in modest 
quantities. Charles Robin's letters certainly indicate more concern 
for the welfare of the settlements than Ferland gives him credit for. 
Under date of October 26, 1783, he expresses to his Jersey repre- 
sentative his wish that their next vessel shall be named " St Peter 
(le patron des pecheurs) " and if there is to be another, the "Aurora " 

"because these names are familiar to the inhabitants of these parts 
such as were used by thdr former connections, in time their old 
manner will wear out and they naturally will adopt ours seeing 
no other set of men — this I observe daily, our borrowing for a 
time something of their manners make us appear more famHiar 
which renders the access easier — a contrary measure such as 
blaming their dress or their customs and those that introduced them 
in the country to whom this, generation must yet in a degree be 
partial, would retard that uniformity so very necessary to men who 
must live together and we are obliged by principles of generosity to 
go through the hardest part requisite to bring it in for we are the 
conquerors' & they the vanquished & such as could not leave the 
country and seek a refuge among their own, being too poor — a 
hard situation indeed, which merits the commisseration of every 
feeling breast." 

Then the loyalist refugees began to come into the country from 
the new States a year after and with the aid of Governor Cox were 
to find settlements about Paspebiac and thence up the Bay. The 



64 Sketches of Gaspe 

vessels brought two hundred famihes in July, 1784, and returned for 
three hundred families more and in view of this impending invasion 
Robin appeals to Governor Cox to leave enough land for the use 
of the fishermen " whose benefit is immense not only in point of 
introducing wealth in the Kingdom but also in contributing to the 
British Marine in a very great measure, since it is allowed by all 
persons that after the coal trade the fishery makes or nurses up 
the most seamen." 

Repeatedly his request was urged upon Governor Cox and two 
years later we find him writing to the Hon. John Collins, Quebec, 
his views of what should be done to improve the condition of the 
inhabitants and picturing the great value of the fisheries of Gaspe. 
" This bay," he says, " together with Gaspe and the whole coast 
between the two places produces at present about Qtls. 50,000 fish 
and about 1,000 Tierces salmon." 

Referring to Ferland's statement about the gaudily dressed fisher- 
maids forced by Mr. Robin's administration into unwelcome luxury 
Mr. Tardif comments, " Judging from the inventory books of stocks 
in those days I should be sorry for the 'grand people of the fau- 
bourgs of Quebec' for all the orders for cloth were for molten and 
serge, molten being a heavy blue flannel used largely for smocks." 

An interesting note from Robin's letters is the following under 
date of Aug. 12, 1783 ; " The Guernsey men have settled at Grande 
Greve." These early settlers on the Grande Greve coast must have 
been independent fishermen selling to the Robins, for no establish- 
ment was organized on that shore till 1798 when the Janvrins 
started the business now conducted by the Wm. Fruing Co. Ltd., 
from Grande Greve as a center with a considerable number of 
stations along the coast. 

I have not attempted to give any details in regard to the com- 
petitors of the Robin interests which have developed on the coast 
during the past half century. Of the Hymans, LeBoutilhier Bros., 
the LeBoutilliers, Marquand & Co., Valpy & Le Bas, The Perce 
Fishing Co., C. Biard & Co., some have gone and some remain. 
It is common conviction on the coast often expressed that the fish- 
ing is not as good as it was in bygone years, that the cod are fewer 
and the bait scarcer, but in old Denys's story of the fishing during 
the half century ending with 1672 there are occasional growls over 
scarcity of bait and if one considers how the fishing stations have 
multiplied on the coast and how many more men are employed in 
the business than ever before, then it is but natural that the share 



Historical Skitcli of the Cod-Fishcrics of Gaspc 65 

falling to each man is palpably slender by comparison. Mr. Dolbel 
of the Fruing Co., has estimated for me that the number of fish 
taken at his stations amounts to an average catch of three to four 
millions, and if this is a fair figure certainly the entire Gaspe coast 
must afford from twenty to thirty millions of cod every year. The 
wonder is that after these nearly three hundred years of fishing 
there is a cod left in all the Gulf. Perhaps no one could find a 
more effective illustration of the profluence of that alma mater of 
all life, the sea. 



The Place. Names 

Many of the older locality names of Gaspe have gone through 
transformations both singular and natural. All the early names 
were those of the French occupation and several of them, like Cap 
Chat, Cap des Rosiers and Perce, date to Champlain's time. Cap 
Chat was named for de Chaste or de la Chate, Champlain's Dieppe 
patron who brought him out on his first trip, and without prejudice 
to its original significance it stands on the map by Francis de Creux, 
dated 1660, as Promontorium felis; Perce is the Insula perforata 
and had been thus designated for many years before; Cap Canon 
or Battery Point at Perce is Promontorium furiosum, while Cap 
d'Espoir or Desespoir (and it has long been written both ways, 
though Abbe Ferland thinks the latter the more likely to be the 
original form) is promontorium spei, the Cape of Hope, d'Espoir. . 

The French names are in priority entitled to survive their Eng- 
lish translations. The French sailors and fishermen have distributed 
names openhandedly along the coast to every projection and cove, 
some of these derived from fancied resemblance of form like the 
cliff at Shiphead, La Vieille while it stood, others from associations 
incident to their discovery like Cap aux Os, where whalebones were 
found at its foot, L'Anse au Sauvage, because the home of a Mic- 
mac family, L'Anse au Beaufils, commemorating some stepson whose 
name and career are forgotten ; names which are the expression of 
the bested sailor's hope or despair, like Cap Bon Ami, d'Espoir and 
many which have been suggested by natural features, Cap Rouge, 
Pointe Jaune, Chien Blanc, Cap Blanc, from the color of their rocks, 
Table-a-rolante, from the slope of the mountain surface. Gaspe 
itself, said to be derived from the split cHff at Cape Gaspe, is an 
Indian word in French dress, which makes it all the more singular 
that there should be another Gaspe in Quebec, a land patent taking 
its name from the patentee, Audebart Gaspe, a patronymic still 
extant and well known. 

The corruptions of the old French place names by the English are 
on every hand, and the transformations are of no recent date. If 
there are any outward and visible expressions of indifference on 
the part of the English inhabitants toward the French it is seen 
most palpably in their treatment of the old names. Where trans- 
lation has been practicable it has been effected, but otherwise the 

[66] 



The Place Names. 67 

original name has been corrupted first in sound then in spelHng. 
It has been metamorphosed by the expression of its sound in 
EngHsh spelHng, making corruptions which are perpetuated today 
on the maps. Alalbay was Moltie Bay, Bale dcs Mollies'^ or Codfish 
Bay; Gritfdn Cove, L\liise an Gris-fonds, taking its name from 
the sandy bottom, not from any griffon which EngHsh imagination 
has thus accredited to the spot. Often the EngUsh residents (I do 
not mean to inckide the Jersey and Guernseymen whose disposition 
is to conserve the French) even decHne the attempt to give the 
French accent to a French name. Meeting an EngHsh woman on 
the road at Gaspe Basin 1 asked her to direct me to the portage 
road, the only highway from the York to the Dartmouth, lying back 
of Gaspe mountain, " The potash road?" she said, " oh yes, it begins 
not far below the mill." On the Dartmouth three miles from the 
Basin is L'Anse au Cousins; among the English it is very like Aunts 
and Cousins. At the end of Point St Peter is a little Hat roc': of 
an island bearing a light house and known to the French as Pla^^'^au 
Island but on some of the English maps it is Plato Island, Flat 
Island and even, by patent carelessness of a compiler, Hat Island. 
Perhaps the most striking instance of this transference and conse- 
quent loss of meaning is the Cap aux Os on the Little Gaspe shore 
— the Cape of the Bone. In Sir Wm. Logan's geological reports of 
this region dating back to 1844 and in those of some of his succes- 
sors the place is spelled Cape Oiseau, bad French for Bird Cape. 
On most of the English maps of the present, and in atlases like the 
Century and Rand and ]\IcNally's it is simply and phonetically Cape 
Ozo, meaningless and almost intentionally indifferent to its origin. 
Now I find the same name in the English mouths rapidly degenerat- 
ing into Caboozo. In the days of Nicholas Denys Gaspe Bay was 
" The Little River "as contrasted to the great river just across the 
narrow Forillon. Now Little River is away up the coast beyond 
Cape d'Espoir. The name Forillon which we have been using as a 
real necessity for the Little Gaspe peninsula is already forgotten by 
the people living on it, though it was well enough known to Abbe 
Ferland in 1836 and Faucher St Maurice in 1876. The name 
Penouil by which the Gaspe Bay was long ago known is still in use 
among the French. It was the Bay of the Peninsula, Penouil being 
a Basque term which was applied to the sandy bar at the head of the 
Bay which is now known as Peninsula. 

*Molue is old French for morue, cod; tnolue is derived from mole, a 
bank, as the molue is a bank-fish. 



i BONAVENTURE ISLAND 

Early Settlement — The Old Houses — Gannet Cliffs 

The way to see Bonaventure Island, and one can not pass it by 
and have seen Gaspe, is first to tramp it, get acquainted with its 
hospitable people, its wooded bluffs and red rocked shore, and catch 
a glimpse of its marvelous bird cliffs, then to cruise about it and 
get the bird cliffs in fuller and more majestic view. 

Bonaventure is about three miles long and somewhat narrower, 
with a surface sloping down from the north to a rocky shore at 
the southwest. Two hundred and fifty or more years ago Father 
Enjalran stopping off at Perce visited a Biscay fisherman on Bona- 
venture who was catching six thousand cod a day, and since the 
date of permanent settlement of the county there has been a fishing 
station on the little western patch of beach where at an early day 
were located the Janvrins whose head establishment was at Grande 
Greve. About it is clustered the remains of the diminutive original 
settlement, and thence along the bit of road which runs to the south 
are the later comers, two or three dozen all told. Bonaventure had 
its mission as early as Perce, and its little church St Claire was 
burned by the Boston " corsairs " in 1690, like St Peter's at Perce. 
Here was the home of Captain Duval, privateer and freebooter 
during the French war of one hundred years ago. Alongside the 
fishing station stands a relic one hundred and fifty years old, 
the Philip Mauger house, weather beaten and patched outside, 
warmly inviting within, infused with hospitahty of the best the 
island can give. Here's a spot to delight the lover of the quaint; 
the home of sailors and the sons of sailors, and equipped with the 
things that sailors love ; Staffordshire images on the mantel over the 
fireplace, a gold lustre jug or two on the shelf under the family 
pictures, a cupboard full of English Davenport and willowware 
and a great six quart Sunderland sailor's pitcher, resplendent 
with its pink metallic sheen, its sailor's mottoes and picture of that 
marvel to contemporary potters, the " New Bridge over the Wear 
at Sunderland, 1798." Above the mantel hangs a sailor's roll, a 
Newcastle or Sunderland device in white glass, the shape of a roll- 
ing pin, decorated with sailor's mottoes in the same style as the 
Sunderland jugs — an ornament solely, but dear to the sailor's heart 
— hung suspended from the wall by ribbons attached to its two 

[68] 



Bonaventiirc Island 69 

handles. I have seen only a part of the interior of the 
house, the great kitchen into which one enters from the 
ground and which extends the full width of the building, the 
little parlor to the left and the smaller dining-room far around 
behind at the remote corner, but fancy pictures the rest of 
the rooms, all on the ground, given over to relics of a former 
time. Here is a glimpse of the house worth recording. When I 
last saw it Mr. Mauger told me that it was to be soon abandoned 
and probably taken down to make way for a new structure, but 
the invisible hand has intervened — death has taken the head of 
the house and the old place has now been abandoned for a New 
York city flat. 

Close upon this venerable house stands another, the ancestral 
home of Mr Butline, and his till he deserted it first to live across 
the channel and then across the Great Divide. It was his home 
when I first saw it, neat and attractive within, brightened by a 
dainty wife and a reminiscent father, a venerable sailor w^ho in 
his early days had brought over from Sunderland another of those 
sailor's jugs. The Butline house must be nearly as old as 
the Mauger house. One's walk may lead him along the road 
to the south end of the island, among the scattered dwellings, fur- 
ther and further apart as he goes, thence if he will he may skirt the 
island's edge along the seaward shore. There are trails through the 
bush which enable him to push his way on the constantly rising 
cliff edge. Among the inevitable spruce and fir he will find an oc- 
casional open patch and in August the pepino berries are ripe and 
to his hand if he fancies their musty taste. Climbing ever higher 
he comes out at length to where the serried ranks of water fowl 
line the seaward face of the rocks. The cliffs have now risen to 
a height of four hundred feet and on the successive ledges of the 
nearly flat red rocks the birds sit in ranks at attention, save for the 
busy sentinels forever hovering above them. Perfect rest and eter- 
nal motion are here combined, but a pistol shot into the air obliter- 
ates all of the former and a white cyclone of plumage and a shrill 
chorus of outcries run all along the ledges. These are the breeding- 
places of the gannets, and they are here in thousands. The gulls and 
cormorants at Perce, it is said, are no longer as numerous as in the 
old days when men w^ere fewer on the coast, but here at Bonaven- 
ture and at Bon Ami, where man seldom resorts, the birds still hold 
their old number. 



70 Sketches of Gaspe 

The view of the north and south gannet cHffs from the water is 
most amazing, for here the eye catches the whole feathered facade 
of the rocks as it can not from the land. One does well, therefore, 
who beats about the island by sail — sometimes a tricky undertaking 
with the crossing currents, but comfortable enough when steered by 
one familiar with these waters. 








Gold Lustre Jl'gs of Bonaventure Island 



GASPE STORIES AND LEGENDS 



Ogress of Bonaventure Island — Virhies of Alca — Little Prisoner 
of Perce — LeClercq's Expedition to the Indians of the 
Cross — Mirage of Cape d'Espoir — Marguerite — Creation 
and Deluge Myth — Myth of the Recreation — Gaspe Flea 

The Ogress of Bonaventure Island 

When one has sought out all the attractions of Bonaventure, has 
stumbled over its red pebbly rocks, threaded its thickets, watched 
its bird clififs, and acquainted himself with its kindly folk, let him 
not think that the present holds all the wonders of this charming 
spot. In the days when Lescarbot wrote his history of New France, 
it was the home of the Gou-gou.* 

Gossipy narrator of the events of Cartier's, Roberval's and Qiam- 
plain's voyages, Lescarbot tells of leaving Tadousac in August, 
and arriving at Perce, where he met Prevert, a Malouin, who had 
been back into the country with the Indians looking for a mine. 
Whatever this mine was, it was alleged to be of copper, and may 
have been one of those on the Grande Greve shore which have 
played such a role in the chronicles of the coast, but the Sieur Pre- 
vert was well scared for his pains and saw most marvelous sights 
on his trip, for he told of savages so wonderfully constructed that 
when they sat down on their " talons " their knees reached more 
than half a foot above their head. He had almost seen the Gou-gou, 
too. Lescarbot had heard of the Gou-gou and he says as one leaves 
the St Lawrence going south toward the Bay of Chaleur there is an 
island where this terrible monster lives. It has the form of a female 
who is a perfect fright (fort cffroyable) and of a size so great that 
the masts of his ship, he was told, would not reach to her waist. 
The Indians were not minded to frequent her lair on Bonaventure, 
where she was often to be seen striding over the rocks, and now 
and again even crossing the channel to the mainland this strenuous 

* Histoire de la Nouvelle France contenant les navigations, decouvertes 
et habitations faites par Ics Frangois es Indes Occidentales et Nouvelle- 
France, souz I'avoeu et authorite de noz Roj-s Tres-Chretiens, et les diverses 
fortunes d'iceu.x eu I'execution des ces choses depuis cent ans jusques a hui. 

[71] 



72. Sketches of Gas'pe 

lady would catch the savages and eat them, or if she did not happen 
to be hungry would put them in an enormous pocket which she 
wore about her and consume them at her leisure. This was a very 
big pocket indeed, larger than any woman has been known to have 
since, for those who have managed to escape from the Gou-gou say 
that it was larger than Lescarbot's ship. She makes awful and 
fearsome noises, and the Indians were so afraid of her that they 
trembled when speaking about her. Lx)ts of them had seen her and 
the Sieur Prevert himself had passed her demesne on his way to 
find his mine, and had heard her strange and terrifying bruit, and 
his Indians had been so frightened thereat they hid themselves, 
fearing she would come to carry them off. 

Lescarbot had satisfied himself before he met the Sieur Prevert 
at Perce, that the story was probably the result of somebody's bad 
digestion and moralizes a bit over the ease with which anyone may 
conjure up a Gou-gou when an unwelcome task lies before him. 
But when the Sieur solemnly retold it with so much circumstance 
and added a cock-and-bull yarn about his copper mine where he 
claimed the metal was naturally reduced by the rays of the sun and 
ran down the mountain side, and supplemented this with his amaz- 
ingly constructed Indians, the historian and Champlain, after due 
consideration of Prevert's statements, came to the conclusion that he 
was a liar. 

That's what one gets for promoting mines in Gaspe. 

The Virtues of Alca 

The sea cliffs of Gaspe and its isles are the homes of myriads of 
birds — Bon Ami, the Perce Rock and the walls of Bonaventure are 
and ever have been the nesting places of unnumbered thousands 
of gulls and cormorants, gannets and guihemots. I have seen the 
" Quay " in the Cape Rosier Cove white with gulls, and if one 
tosses a stone over the Bon Ami cliffs or the red walls of Bona- 
venture his reply is a whirl of feathered outcry and remonstrance. 
Farther out in the Gulf on the Magdalen and the Bird Islands the 
numbers of these birds must be as great as when the white man 
first came to the country. In those days the Great Auk, the Alca 
or Plautus impennis, was an important element in the bird census 
of the coast — great ungainly flightless gare fowl driven to extinc- 
tion generations ago because it could not escape the clubs of the 
fishermen. De Creux described the incredible number of the 



Stories and Legends 73 

birds on this coast, and gave a picture to show the abundance 
of the creatures and the way the savages took them(Historia Cana- 
densis, 1664). These birds look hke gulls, but no gulls, unless they 
were young and unable to fly, would stand ciuietly by and take the 
blows being dealt them in his picture. The young gull with its grey 
fluffy plumage often seems of larger size than its parent and the 
fishermen on the coast, who spurn an old gull for food, are fond 
of the young ones. 

Paul Juvenaeus, of the Society of Jesus, a distinguished name 
by its own merit among Canadians, says De Creux, and " who has 
accomplished things to the glory of God," observed two rocks in the 
mouth of the Great River, one round and the other square, " placed 
by God the Lord in the midst of the waters," so covered with birds 
from top to bottom that they resembled a dovecote ; so numerous 
indeed were the birds that they suffered themselves to be trod on 
and unless one directed his steps cautiously they would by rising in 
sudden flight overwhelm him ; indeed they would even overturn the 
very boats. This was the Insula \^olucrum, the Bird Rocks of the 
Magdalens. 

Whatever the birds were which De Creux included under the 
term Alca, it is well to know that there were ever creatures of such 
virtues found on the coast. I am of the conviction that the Great 
Auk alone is intended by our author's accouilt, not merely because 
he termed it Alca, but his description seems to justify the infer- 
ence. It is the same bird that Denys called the penguin. He speaks 
of the Indians hunting them after the old snow had compacted into 
ice. The other birds are migratory and are oft" south before the 
snows arrive, but these they caught in nets, knocked them over 
with sticks, a child could take one, catching it by chasing it over 
the snow, so hampered were they by their own clumsy weight. 

One would hardly believe that the claw of the hind toe of this 
Alca was stored with marvelous virtues. Ground up fine and 
mixed with the liquor expressed from lilies, or a little Celtic nard, 
it formed a wondrous item in the Gaspesian pharmacopoeia. It 
cures epilepsy and palpitation of the heart, is singularly eflicacious 
in palsy of the ring-finger, trembling of the palm of the hand, and 
titillation of the left auricle. It is used with very satisfactory re- 
sults in skin diseases, for varicose veins, flatulence, pleurisyj diar- 
rhoea, black bile, vertigo, weeping eyes, foul humors, dullness of 
the head, and convulsions of the legs. For worms and colic pains it 



74 Sketches of Gaspe 

possesses remarkable efficiency. The fishermen of the coast who 
slaughtered the creatures to extmction should have been well forti- 
fied against human ills. It is humanity's misfortune that the homely 
fowl is no more, and now the market price of Auk's eggs has gone 
up to $18,000 a dozen. 

The Little Prisoner of Perce 

In 1 66 1, when Andre Richard was the Jesuit missioner on the 
Gaspe coast, the Gaspesians were only a small band of barbarians, 
not more in number than the French fishermen who were to be 
found each summer at Perce, perhaps four or five hundred souls. 
Few as they were, outbursts of pure savagery were not infrequent 
among them. An Indian could not slake his. thirst for blood, as the 
cultured white man does, by the slaughter of wild game whose 
death was necessary for his life rather than a gruesome and un- 
wholesome accessory to his happiness. Another tribe was his nat- 
ural enemy, an attack on it required no other excuse. 

All during that winter of 1661 the young men of the tribe, eager 
for diversion, had urged in the Councils an expedition against the 
Montagnais who lived on the north shore of the Great River. The 
good father tried vainly to dissuade them, and with the spring they 
proceeded to put their designs into effect. 

" I was with them," says Father Richard, " and testified to them 
of the grief I felt at their thoughtless enterprise, for I did not doubt 
that they would attack and kill the first people they encountered 
beyond the Gulf without taking care to find out whether they were 
friends or enemies." They spurned his pleas and off they went in 
two shallops they had bought from the French fishermen. Guided 
by a superstition, a dream or an impulse, they were at the 
mercy of every omen which their childlike intellects could draw 
from their natural surroundings. They were careful not to wet 
themselves in launching, nor to run the shallops on the sand, other- 
wise their expedition would fail from the start, and indeed they 
had not been long gone when one of their leaders recalled some 
order given by one of his relatives when dying and with his crew 
abandoned the enterprise. " Quand quelqu'un est prive du flam- 
beau de la Foy, il prend aisement les tenebres pour la lumiere, la 
nuit pour le jour et la folic et la sattise pour la sagesse!" exclaims 
the Father. 

At length the remaining shallops reached Anticosti, and, passing 
on toward the Mingan islands, perceived a canoe shoot out from one 



Stories and Legends 75 

of them. At once they gave chase, making no inquiry whether it 
was friend or foe, enough that it contained human beings, the game 
they were seeking. The canoe contained a man, a woman, a girl 
and a boy, returning from a hunting expedition on the ]\Iingans, 
and people of the tribe of the Papinachiouekhi, who lived up the 
St Lawrence just beyond the Montagnais. Armed with the w'hite 
man's arquebuses, the Gaspesians pulled their guns and let fly a 
volley w^hich killed all except the little boy, a child of seven, and 
him they wounded sorely. Scalping their victims and taking the 
wounded boy into their shallop, they set about, flushed wnth the 
same pride that imbues the heart of king, president and priest at 
the murder of a helpless deer or salmon. With shout and halloos 
they made their victorious return known to their tribesmen waiting 
on the banks of the river whence they had sailed. And as they 
approached the landing place they threw before them into the water 
the scalps they had taken and with them the little prisoner wounded 
as he was and who might better have been left to drown than to suffer 
the tortures reserved for him by his rescuers. As though he had 
fallen among wolves he was torn about, snatched from one to 
another, even though he had four bullets in his head. But at last 
being made over to the chieftain's wife, she drew a knife from 
her bosom, plunged it through the child's arm and forced him 
to sing as the knife hung there. No whimper or tear came from 
the little stoic, but all his sufferings he bore with fortitude. Vainly 
did the sympathetic fishermen try to get him away from his bloody 
captors, and the good father's pleadings and reproofs resulted only 
in a promise from his " children " that they would not kill the lad. 
Ofif they went to Perce, Father Richard following still in the hope 
of getting possession of the prisoner. There the surgeon of the 
fishing fleet dressed his wounds, taking three bullets from his head 
and leaving one in his head and one in his shoulder which he could 
not remove. But the boy gave no sign of his intense suffering save 
a sigh during the whole of this painful procedure. Quietly watching 
his opportunity Father Richard baptized the boy and then saw with 
feelings of extreme regret the lad laid in a canoe for removal to 
some other place. Seeking out the chieftain's wife he brought to 
bear upon her all the arguments he could command and all the 
fulminations of the church to gain her consent that the dying boy 
be given to him. She acceded and the council of the chiefs agreed 
to the ransom proposed by the priest. The tender nursing of the 
Father brought the lad back to life and he grew to strength again, 



76 Sketches of Gaspe 

happy so long as he was among the Frenchmen at Perce but over- 
whelmed with dread and apprehension at the sight of a Gaspesian. 
Father Richard soon after returned to France and took the 
boy with him, but he says the lad never overcame his fear of the 
savages or anything that suggested them. One day walking through 
the streets of Rouen he saw a chimney-sweep and thinking him a 
savage ran in terror into a shop to hide himself. In France he was 
educated and sent finally to the Jesuit college at Clermont to at 
last take his place among that body of devoted men who were the 
pathfinders in the New World. 

LeClercq's Wearisome Expedition to the Indians of the Cross 

Soon after his arrival in Gaspe in 1675 Father LeClercq learned 
of a tribe of savages living southward in the country of the Gaspe- 
sians among whom the sacred symbol was said to be a cross. This, 
in the dedication of his Relation to the Princess d'Epinoy, he has 
said " they carve, and religiously carry beneath their benches and 
under their garments ; it presides at their councils, in their voyages 
and in all the important business of the nation ; their cemeteries ap- 
pear more Christian than barbarian from the number of crosses 
which they place on the graves. In a word, Madame," he adds, 
'' they are the Athenians of the New World who were rendering 
their homage and adoration to the cross of a God to them unknown, 
while the Princes of Epinoy and Melun were engaged upon their 
celebrated voyages to the Holy Land with St Louis and our other 
Kings of France." 

That the zealous priest should be consumed with eagerness to see 
these people whom he christened the Portes-Croix, to learn what 
he might of the origin of their sacred symbol and with a conviction 
that among these the seed he had come to sow would surely find a 
hospitable soil with promise of a rich harvest, was to be expected. 
It happened that in midwinter of 1677 he was at Nepisguit on the 
south shore of Chaleur Bay and about fifty miles away from 
Miramichi where these Indians lived, within the patent of Richard 
Denys de Fronsac, son of the Nicholas of whom we have often 
spoken. One of these had been sent to Nepisguit by the sagamo 
of the tribe to invite him to visit his people. As it happened that 
an Indian and his wife were just then departing for Miramichi, 
LeClercq decided to accompany them, notwithstanding the season, 
and the priest was to be further guided and provided for by 
Hainault de Barbaucannes, a French settler on Nepisquit Bay. It 



Stories ami Legends yj 

was no great distance between the two points, but the priest found 
trouble enough before him. He evidently expected that the trip 
would be a short one or that game was to be depended on for exist- 
ence, for they took for provisions only a couple dozen biscuits, five 
or six pounds of flour, three pounds of butter and a little bark cask 
of brandy which all leaked out the first day. With this luggage 
on their backs and raquettes on feet tney started oft' making pretty 
good progress for the first day, twelve or fifteen miles over the 
snow. Night coming on they dug a hole four or five feet deep in 
the snow with their raquettes, and covering the bottom with branches 
slept under the moon. In the morning, never for a nioment or under 
extremest condition forgetful of his high mission, the journey was 
not resumed till a little sanctuary had been constructed of fir boughs 
and mass celebrated with proper form and ceremony. Then ofif 
they started throug-h the Bois Brule, a short cut to Miramichi. 

The whole country between the Xepisguit and the Miramichi had 
some years before been burned over, kindled by a lightning flash 
when the forests were extremely dry, and that day buried under 
the snow, deserted of all game and devoid of fuel, it was no place 
except for passengers who knew their destination and how to reach 
it quickly. Now in and out through these mournful solitudes with 
no guide, lost to all direction, the snow falling furiously, the little 
party wandered for several days. The scanty provision they had 
made for their journey was soon gone, with nothing left but a 
handful of cornmeal which they boiled in a little snow water and 
drank amongst them each day at evening. The strength of the party 
was fast failing, but they must move onward or die and on they 
went, Hainault leading. Father LeClercq far in the rear. They 
could not retrace their steps, for the new snow had covered their 
tracks ; and without knowing where, " they went wheresoever it 
pleased God to lead " them. 

The snow ceased and a fierce northeast wind blew in from off 
the Gulf ; their food was gone, only a pair of Indian moccasins re- 
mained which Hainault boiled to make a thin soup. LeClercq had 
fallen into a buried pit and broken his raquettes and then had been 
precipitated over a cliff into the freezing waters of a brook up to 
his waist. Starving, half frozen, lamed and fainting with heart 
weakness, the missioner rejoiced in his sufferings and kept before 
his eyes the example of St Francis Xavier who died destitute and 
alone in his little cabin. On the seventh day they found a new made 
footprint of an Indian and rejqiced to think they were not far from 



yS Sketches of Gaspe 

succor. Toward evening, while still dragging themselves slowly- 
forward, they were overtaken by the Indian himself, who was able 
to give them a little food for he had taken three partridges. Again 
they encamped for the night and the hospitable savage would guide 
them out of their difficulties if they would make proper return for 
his services — he would like two dozen blankets, a keg of meal and 
three of Indian corn, a dozen cloaks, ten guns with powder and 
ball and numberless other things. All this he demanded as a con- 
sideration for putting them in the right way and conducting them 
to his cabin — little enough when starvation and death were the 
alternatives. 

That night they once more slept in the snow and with the early 
morning started off without food, though the priest tarried so long 
at his prayers that the savage suspected him of familiar relations 
with the Good Spirit and demanded that he tell him what game 
they should get that day. The long argument that followed neces- 
sary to convince the Indian that the white man's God was some- 
thing different than the god of his dreams and did not reveal him- 
self thus to his children, took precious moments and the day was 
getting on, but it was after all the main purpose rather to convince 
the savage than to hasten to save his own life. Toward evening 
they caught a couple of hedgehogs, of which they made a pot of 
soup, and at close of day reached the cabin of the savage. They 
had found the end of their dangers though not yet the end of 
their troublous journey. 

Here, however, the priest'^s mission to the Porte-Croix Indians 
began, for he found in the cabin high in the place of honor a cross 
adorned with glass beads. It looked down upon the heads of the 
Indian's wife and his concubine, and LeClercq, finding in the situa- 
tion a fine opportunity for the inculcation of Christian precepts, took 
the symbol reverently in his hands and explained to the company 
the significance of this cross and that it condemned the bigamous 
condition in which the Indian was living, and that he must either 
renounce his concubine or give up his cross. The Indian declared 
that he would give up both wives and his children, too, rather than 
lose his cross, which he had received from his ancestors as the eldest 
son's title of inheritance and which he honored as the symbol which 
distinguished the Indians of Miramichi from all other tribes of New 
France. 

It was only after another arduous journey over newly fallen snow 
that Father LeClercq's little party finally reached the residence of 



Stories and Legends 79 

Richard Denys, where they were soon refreshed from the pahiful 
labors of the way across the Bois Brule. There during the re- 
mainder of the winter he preached the cross to these Indians. 

It has been said by later writers in explanation of the remarkable 
presence of the cross in this tribe that their ancestors had derived 
it from the earlier French missionaries and their descendants had 
forgotten its origin. But it was only in 1620 that the RecoUets had 
come to this part of the coast and established their first mission. 
There may have been an occasional missioner here before from 
the settlements south in Breton and Cadie, but in so brief a period 
the introduction of the cross by the Frenchmen could hardly have 
taken on the form of a tradition. LeClercq, seeking to elicit some 
information as to its origin, taxed the chieftain with having re- 
ceived it from some of his spiritual predecessors. " Ha ! What ! " 
said the sagamo in reply, '* Thou art a patriarch ; thou dost ask us 
to believe all that thou tellest us, and thou refusest to believe what 
we say to thee. Thou art not yet forty years of age and it is only 
two years since thou hast dwelt among the Indians and thou dost 
pretend to know our maxims, our traditions and our customs better 
than our ancestors who taught them to us? Dost thou not still see 
every day the aged Ouioudo who is more than one hundred and 
twenty years of age? He saw the first ship that approached the 
country.* He has often told thee that the Indians of Miramichi 
did not receive the cross from foreigners and whatever he knows 
of it he himself learned from the tradition of his fathers whose 
lives were at least as long as his. Thou canst then infer that we 
had received it before the French came to our coasts. But if thou 
findest still some difificulty in yielding to this argument here is 
another which should entirely convince thee of the truth thou callest 
in question. Thou hast intellect since thou art a patriarch and 
speakest to God. Thou knowest that the nation of the Gaspesians 
extends from the Cape des Rosiers to the Cape Breton. Thou art 
not ignorant that the Indians of the Ristigouche are our brothers 
and compatriots, speaking the same language with us. Thou didst 
leave them to come to us. Thou hast instructed them. Thou 
hast seen the old people who were baptized by other missioners. 
If then the cross is the sacred mark which distinguishes Christians 
from infidels as thou teachest, tell us how it happens that the patri- 
archs would have given us the use of it in preference to our 
brothers of the Ristigouche whom they baptized and who neverthe- 



•One hundred and forty-three years old, if he had been born the year of Cartier's arrival. 



8o Sketches of Gaspe 

less have not always had the Christian symbol in veneration like 
our ancestors who never received this baptism." 

Surprising and inexplicable as it was to find a tribe whose sole 
symbol of religion was the cross, yet its possessors seemed no 
more amenable to the Father's instructions than were the rest 
of the Gaspesians. It would seem that today the sagamo's argu- 
ment has no standing with archeologists (if they happen to know 
of it) for such mysterious appearances of this simple symbol are 
common in early culture stages of many peoples. 

The Mirage of Cape d'Espoir 

The curve of the coast south of Perce village ends in Cape Blanc. 
Thence onward runs the long shore of L'Anse a Beaufils, anglice, 
Lanse a Buffy, ending in L'Anse du Cap or Cape Cove terminated 
at the south by the bold head of Cape d'Espoir. Between Cape 
d'Espoir, Bonaventure Island and Perce lies a stretch of water 
where, recounts the Abbe Ferland, remarkable performances have 
taken place in the play of natural forces. The fishermen of his 
day still told marvelous tales of what they and their fathers before 
them had beheld with their own eyes and in which they had been 
a part. 

The day is calm, the waters smooth as glass. All at once and 
■Wfithout a breath of breeze the sea becomes agitated, the waves rise 
in mountains, they chase and break over each other. Then of a 
sudden on these tormented waters appears a vessel at full sail 
struggling against the boiling waves. On the poop, on the fo'csle, 
in the shrouds, everywhere are seen men in the antique military 
garb of soldiers of another century. With foot resting on the bow- 
sprit and ready to jump ashore, a man, who bears the marks of a 
superior officer, stands in the attitude of command. With his right 
arm he points out to the pilot the sombre cape which rises before 
them; on his left leans a female figure draped in a white veil. 

The heavens are black, the wind whistles through the co'rdage, 
the vessel flies like a dart. A few seconds and it will break upon 
the rocks. Behind her rises an enormous wave, snatches her and 
carries her on toward Cape d'Espoir. With piercing cries, among 
which a female voice can be heard, she is torn to pieces and melts 
away in the bruit of the tempest and the crashes of the thunder. 

The vision passes, and the silence of death lies upon the waters. 
The vessel, the pilot, the strange equipment, the soldiers, the man 



Stories and Lci^^ciids 8t 

of lofty bearing, the figure with the long white drapery have all 
disappeared. The sun shines upon a calm and glistening sea. The 
ripples lap the foot of Cape d'Espoir. 

In the Abbe's day and in the memory of older men still living 
there still lay on this cape and higli above the highest tide, the 
broken skeleton of a vessel known to all the coast as the naufrage 
anglais. In the chronicles of the coast it was looked upon as a 
remnant of Admiral Walker's fleet of 171 1 with which the tempests 
played such havoc, as we have already recounted ; the heretics of to- 
day say it is but the keel and ribs of a schooner laid down long ago 
by the French on the high plateau of the cape and afterwards 
abandoned. 

Marguerite 

When the stern and rigorous Roberval made his second voyage 
to New France, in 1542, he brought out with him a large and some- 
what mixed company. In so brilliant colors had he painted the at- 
tractions of the new domain to his countrymen, that not a few 
gentlemen of estate with their ladies had been moved to cast their 
fortunes with him in permanent settlement. Besides these were 
soldiers to maintain the new military post up the Great River, and 
also some convicts which their country could spare for servile labor 
in the new settlements. Among the adventurers Roberval brought 
his own niece Marguerite, accompanied by her chaperon, thinking 
to let her see the land or perhaps to marry her to some settler of 
substance and degree. It is quite probable that Marguerite was 
in need of separation from her friends in France, for she was a 
flirtatious demoiselle and either quite beyond the control of her 
duenna or else the latter was very remiss in her duties. 

The voyage was a long and tedious one, and the passengers had 
time to fully acquaint themselves with one another, for there's still 
no place where acquaintance is so easy as on the ocean. Mar- 
guerite, bubbling over with the gentle spirit of dalliance which has 
got others into trouble as well as herself, became so involved with 
a young Norman aboard, Galliard by name, that her imperious 
uncle, though he could not then have left his own youth far behind, 
taxed her with her frivolities, reproved her for her departure from 
propriety and the conventions of deportment. But the effervescence 
of girlhood was beyond restraint, and as the young woman stood 
in-no fear of her relation and much less of her duenna, her matters 
of the heart progressed so rapidly it soon became evident that even 



82 Sketches of Gaspc 

virtue had been scarred. The commander, scandaHzed and indig- 
nant, was just then swinging his vessels around from the Gulf into 
the mouth of the Great River. His fury passed all bounds of sym- 
pathy or reason, and his wounded pride sought out the quickest 
and direst means of expunging the blot upon his name. Steering 
his vessel straight for the land he swung to alongside a rocky islet 
and on this blasted solitude, a dreary rock inhabited only by gulls 
and comorants, he disembarked the fractious Marguerite with her 
lover and duenna and a few bags of provisions. Grimly turning 
his face upon her, he sternly read out the lesson of her sin, his 
curse, her punishment ; and thereupon set sail never again to rest 
his eye upon her. 

The romance of love was now beaten out, its glamour rubbed off. 
The eternal rock, the storms, despair, suffering and death con- 
fronted them. Relief was beyond hope. In the distance were the 
blue outlines of the rocky mainland, but they were beyond reach 
and uninhabited. From there no succor could come, and the power 
remaining in themselves to effect salvation was nothing. The young 
man, perhaps to atone for the misery he had caused, took one 
desperate chance — the only one — knowing that almost certain 
destruction must await him. Gathering together loose bits of drift- 
wood washed down by the river into the nooks of the rock, he 
bound them together with long stalks of tangle, making a 
little raft, not more than a float, and lashing himself to it by 
the frail withes he cast himself into the waves hoping to be carried, 
with the aid of such propulsion as he could give, to the shore. He 
never returned. We may believe that the duenna was soon snatched 
away by death, for in the traditions of the coast it is said that two 
years from the time the flinty hearted Frenchman abandoned his 
niece in the forsaken spot, her fearful shrieks of despair drew 
thither some passing fishermen who took her and her babe off 
but only to yield her life soon after as a result of her fearful ex- 
periences. 

The fishermen say that still today in rough weather her cries can 
sometimes be heard along the coast as the land winds whistle down 
the deep ravines. This is an oft told and wandering tale, oftenest 
located on some unknown island of Acadia or Newfoundland. It 
varies in the telling but works well wherever the wind sighs and 
screams. 



Stories and Lc<!;ciids 83 

A Ckkation and Dkluge Myth 

To the Souri{[uois, of wiioni the (iaspesians were a branch, the 
Sun was the Supreme Deity. Sun-worship still prevailed among 
them when the Frenchmen arrived on their shores. It was the 
Sun, therefore, who created all the L'niverse. Having made the 
Earth by his fiat, he caused the waters of the hearth to part asunder 
and the land to ai)pear. Then he divided the land into many parts 
by means of great and small lakes, and on each division of the land 
he created first man and then woman, and fur long }cars they lived 
and peojjled the Earth. i>ut at length they became mischievous and 
did wickedly toward each other and their children, and even their 
children slew one another. When the Sun beheld this he was filled 
with grief and wept great Roods of tears upon the hearth till the 
waters covered all the lands even to the tips of the highest moun- 
tains and the whole surface of the Earth was drowned. The in- 
habitants endeavored to save themselves from the terrific outpour in 
their bark canoes, but the winds overwhelmed them and they all 
perished miserably save a few who had lived virtuous lives, whom 
the Sun permitted to float in their canoes till the waters subsided. 
To these, as a consolation for the death of their friends, the Deity 
gave renewed powers and long lives so that they might repeople 
the earth. 

This is the fabric as given by Father LeClercq, less detailed than 
the re-creation myth which follows, and freer of complications with 
theology, but singularly harmonious with the worldwide folk stories 
of these primitive conceptions in human development. 

The AIvth of the Re-creation 

When the Earth had been drowned by the universal flood and 
no life was left upon its surface INIichabou the Great Hare was (in 
the lore of the Gaspesians) the chief of the spirit world and the 
builder of the new earth. With the spirits of which he was master 
he floated over the boundless waters on a raft made of trees. Seek- 
ing to find a grain of sand out of which to build a new earth he 
commanded the Otter and the Beaver to dive deep into the water, 
if perchance they might find bottom and bring back this remnant 
of the drowned world, but it was in vain. The Musk-Rat, moved 
by a wish for the common good, then volunteered to make the trial 
and disappeared beneath the waters. Twenty-four hours afterward 
he reappeared on the surface of the water, dead. But on examining 



^4 Sketches of Gasps 

his body closely a grain of sand was found clinging to one of his 
feet. The Musk-Rat had given his life to find the seed of the new 
earth. Seizing this sand grain the Great Hare let it fall on the raft 
of trees and immediately earth began to grow on the raft till it 
covered it all and still continued to grow. When it had grown to 
the size of a mountain the Great Hare made a tour of it and it 
still continued to grow. The Fox was charged to watch the progress 
of the increase and when the earth had become large enough to 
give life and shelter to all animals he was to inform his com- 
panions. Though the Fox labored earnestly the Great Hare was not 
satisfied with his report and desiring to know the exact truth made 
an inspection himself and found the earth too small. He then 
caused it to grow larger and continued to make his own inspection 
and to add to its size. After the formation of the land the animals 
retired to places which they judged most suitable. 

Some of them died and out of their bodies the Great Hare made 
men whom he taught to fish and hunt. To each of these he pre- 
sented a woman, saying "My son why fearest thou? I am the 
Great Hare. I have given thee life, today I give thee a companion. 
Man, thou shalt hunt, thou shalt carry the canoe and do everything 
that a man ought. ■ Woman thou shalt prepare the food for thy 
husband, thou shalt bear his snowshoes. Thou shalt cure the pelts 
and thou shalt weave. Acquit thyself in all things as a woman 
should." 

The Gaspb Flea 

I know no marks on his body by which he can be distinguished 
from others in the same line of industry, but I know by the marks 
on my body that he is there. I have never seen him and I have 
never felt it necessary to hunt 'him. It would ill beseem a visitor 
from mosquito laden latitudes to take exception to so ancient an 
accompaniment of Gaspe civilization. To spur a drowsy body to 
activity, or to drive a sluggish mind into diverting avenues, I know 
no more direct stimulus. Rome would be as little Rome without 
St. Peter's as without her fleas. Unaided by this prodding, the 
intellectual zeal of the Germans, the philosophies of the Scots would 
surely have languished. Indeed the world has wholly failed to 
recognize its debt to these reminders of our presence upon earth. 

Burns has apostrophized the louse in immortal lines ; that fell foe 
to slumber, the bed-bug, has descended to us along a most ancient 
and distinguished lineage through a series of adaptations that can- 



Stories and Legends 85 

not fail to arouse the highest interest in the student of natural 
selection. None sings its praises, but no one who knows its history 
can cease to wonder at its performances. Ages gone its ancestors 
lived in the sea orderly and independent lives. In time it adapted 
itself to terrestial habits, to life in the virgin forest, and by gradual 
modification to an existence depending on the life of others. As 
man broke in upon the primitive forests it gradually attached itself 
to him and to his domicile, then to the cracks and crevices therein, 
more particularly to those of his wooden bedstead. Nature has 
rarely offered so brilliant an illustration of quick adaptiveness by 
change of habitat, and it will be an interesting problem of genera- 
tions to come to note the transformation through which this race 
will pass on the abolition from human habitations of attractive cran- 
nies for its lurking and breeding places. 

For the flea, however, if it has a distinguished ancestry and a 
variegated career we are still ignorant of it. The little beast, tire- 
some at times, seems to have for its mission to tone up the more 
venerable civilizations of the earth, to stimulate "to new endeavor 
or to lethal forgetfulness of the obsolete and useless. 

Our little Canadian friend, full of exuberant expression when 
the hay is being cut, constitutes one of the brilhant features of the 
invisible scenery of the coast. 



FEB o li^uy 



BREKTANO'S 



jm 



X. 



